


Hold Me Tight And Kiss Me So

by Selenai



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Cheating, Christmas, Drunk Sex, Dry Humping, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Fingering, Hand Jobs, Hotel Room Sex, Kissing, M/M, Mistletoe, Rimming, Sloppy Makeouts, Vancouver Canucks, even in a christmas fic, locker room drama, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:44:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 59,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenai/pseuds/Selenai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex loves holiday parties, even when he's laid out with a broken jaw and it's really the only chance he gets to interact with his teammates. It complicates things a little that he's still fighting the temptation that is Ryan Kesler, and once you mix in a little Christmas Spirit and some not-so-well-meaning mistletoe, things get messy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from. It all started with a conversation I had with my fiancée where it was stated that I don't like Christmas enough and I thought I would try to prove her wrong. I don't know if this fic really succeeds at that, but I gave it my best shot! Hopefully it is a little bit Christmas-y! C:
> 
> Just read over by me, so I own all mistakes, hopefully there aren't too many.

Alex loved holiday parties. Even when his jaw was broken and he couldn’t eat anything. They were cheery and everyone always drank enough that they were loose and happy and always full of conversation about their kids and family and anything else that popped into their heads. Usually talk of the season and their scoring troubles were left for the next day when there would be plenty of time to go back to wallowing in that pit of uncertainty.

He’d brought Nancy with him, and it had been good for them to get a night together away from the girls for the first time in a while. It was Ryan’s turn to host, and when Andrea had opened the door for them, it had been like stepping into a Christmas village or something. Of course Ryan had gone above and beyond decorating his house for his kids and for the team. Whatever he did, that man always did it one hundred and ten percent. 

Alex felt familiar warmth in the pit of his stomach that he tamped down, as he reached out to take his wife by the elbow, leading her inside carefully. 

“Wait until you see what Ryan did with the place,” Andrea said with a small smile as Alex leaned in to brush his lips lightly against her cheek. Nancy copied his movement and they let Andrea take their coats as they made their way further into the house, noting that the place was definitely just as decked out for Christmas as it had looked like from the doorway. Most of the team was already there, mingling among themselves all over the foyer and living room. 

He couldn’t tell what Andrea had been talking about, but he glanced around to see if he could catch sight of Ryan anyways and found himself grinning when he saw him standing just up at the top of the stairs with Lui, drinking out of glasses and laughing at whatever Ryan was talking about. His attention was yanked away from that by the feel of Nancy’s fingers tangling with his as she led him over to where there was a table set up with a large punch bowl full of what Alex assumed was well-spiked eggnog. He portioned out a large glass for Nancy and handed it to her before doing the same for himself and taking a long sip of it. 

It was delicious. He could tell that Ryan had obviously been in charge of it. There was no way that Andrea would have put that much rum in it. 

Andrea came up from their side, obviously having dealt with their coats. “Did you figure it out yet?”

“Figure what out?” Alex asked, honestly curious.

“Figure out what Ryan did to get everyone all worked up? You can’t honestly think that he would give up the chance to prank the whole team at his own house?”

Alex laughed a little at that, shrugging. She was right. She knew Ryan just a little as well as he did, if not better (and he tamed down the little bit of jealousy at that, because how was it his place to feel that at all, she was his wife), of course Ryan would have used the party as an excuse to do _something_. “What did he do? I can’t tell. It’s obviously very sneaky. Very like Ryan.”

Andrea nodded and lifted a finger to her lips, obviously swearing them to secrecy. “There’s mistletoe all over the house. He wants to catch some of the guys in the most awkward position. He thinks they’ll do it, since they’ll be drinking. And who could say no to the social pressure of standing under the mistletoe?”

Alex’s eyes widened a little at that. It was a little bit genius, but he thought—Ryan was probably right. Under scrutiny from everyone else and after drinking enough of this stuff, the guys were pretty likely to just give in and do whatever they were told. It was genius, if you thought that sort of pranking was genius. Ryan obviously did.

His eyes were drawn back up to where Ryan was up talking to Lui, his head thrown back as he laughed at something. He swallowed hard. Ryan looked really great, dressed up for the party and even with his hair slicked up and spiked in that stupid way he thought made him look cool. It kind of did. It definitely set him apart.

“Why don’t you go up there instead of standing down here just staring at them? It’s getting a little weird, love.”

Alex flushed a little at that, but nodded as he leaned in to press a soft kiss to his wife’s cheek as she patted his lightly and he stepped back to head up the stairs to where Ryan was. He really did want to be with his teammate. But then again, when didn’t he want to be? It was just about knowing when he should and shouldn’t be.

By the time he made it up the stairs, Ryan and Lui were finished whatever they’d been talking about because Lui was excusing himself to get more eggnog. “This shit is great,” he was saying as he stepped around Alex with a pat to his shoulder and bounded down the stairs.

Alex turned to Ryan who looked comfortable leaning against the wall and just watching the people down below. “It is good eggnog,” he said, taking a sip of his own. “Lots of rum in here. You obviously made it. It’s definitely one of your parties, Kes.”

Ryan grinned that wide grin of his and nodded. Alex licked his lips and forced himself not to think too much about how good that grin looked on Ryan’s face. It looked really great.

“Of course I did. Andrea made all the food, but I guess you’re not really eating that much yet, are you?”

Sighing, Alex shook his head. “Not yet. But the eggnog is good. I can drink it all I want.”

Ryan reached out and brushed his fingers lightly over Alex’s jaw, sparking a heat that rushed through his whole body. “Does it hurt?”

He shrugged a little and straightened his shoulders, trying to ignore how good the touch felt. He forced himself to stand absolutely still.

Really his jaw mostly hurt at night when he was trying to sleep and had nothing else to do but to think about how much it sucked to have another injury, but it didn’t really hurt more than any other injury he’d had. “It’s fine. I’ll be better before you know it.”

Snorting a little Ryan’s fingers fell from Alex’s jaw and he pushed away from the wall so that he could lean against the railing, looking over the party. “Yeah, it would be a shame if you couldn’t chirp the same way anymore. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

He was obviously teasing, but Alex couldn’t help but to flush at the comment, reaching out to punch Ryan lightly in the arm. “Oh, shut up. Like you don’t chirp on the ice. You’re just jealous that you don’t do it as good as me.”

“Nobody chirps like you do, Alex. It’s not that we don’t do it as good as you, it’s that nobody does it as _much_ as you. Come on, like it’s not the most ironic injury for you to have gotten.”

“Hey, that’s not really—“

A bustling of sound from below caught their attention and Alex glanced over the railing to see what was going on.

Jason and Eddie had gotten themselves stuck under a piece of mistletoe that Ryan had hung just under the sliding glass door that led to the back patio.

“Come on, boys, it’s in the spirit of Christmas,” Andrea was saying in her sweetest voice. 

Ryan was laughing a little, reaching out to grab Alex’s arm for support as he hunched over. Alex was laughing a little, too, letting himself be distracted from their current conversation by the scene unfolding in front of them.

The two by the door looked surprised at the whole thing but really between the two of them, Eddie looked the least put out to be in the whole situation and Alex assumed that it had something to do with him being a goalie. They were a weird sort, and Eddie was among the weirdest that he’d ever known. 

“Come on guys, don’t be Scrooges!” Ryan was calling over the crowd. 

Jason just sighed a little and turned his head away from Eddie who leaned in and brushed his lips against Jason’s whiskered cheek in a motion that wasn’t as quick as it probably had to be. 

There was a little bit of catcalling from the crowd, not a little of which came from both Alex and Ryan as they laughed along with everyone else. Jason reached up and pulled the mistletoe down from where it had been hanging and threw the bundle full up the stairs and at Ryan with not really surprising accuracy. Ryan caught it and stuffed it into the pocket of his pants with a grin. 

“Thanks, Garri, never know when that might come in handy!”

Jason just made a face at him and the party seemed to calm down a little and go back to its previous state.

“Like I was saying,” Ryan began again, turning his attention back to Alex. Alex had forgotten what it had been like to be under the full attention of those eyes, and he found that it was hard to argue with anything the other man was saying. He felt a squirming in the pit of his stomach and a sudden want to search out the sight of his wife in the group under them. Maybe seeing her would make some of what he was feeling calm down. “Like I was saying, it’ll be fine. It’s just your jaw. It’s not like you _really_ need it to play. You’ll just have to look ridiculous for a while when you get back. I’m sure the other guys will have something new to chirp at you for for a while with the new headgear. Weren’t you complaining just a little while ago that they were always saying the same shit over and over again? You should be happy about this!”

This time it was Alex who was making a face at Ryan who was obviously making fun of him and he crossed his arms. “You know, one day you’re going to get hurt and have to wear something stupid and I’m just going to let everyone chirp you. Won’t even defend your honour once.”

Ryan barked out a laugh at that, shaking his head. “Oh please. That’s how you have fun on the ice.”

He grinned just a little bit and shook his head, but didn’t uncross his arms. He wasn’t letting Ryan off the hook that easily. “I’ll make the exception.”

“That’s not very Christmas-y of you. What’s wrong, Burr, not feeling the Christmas Spirit this year because of your face?”

Alex glanced down at the crowd and caught sight of Nancy, grinning a little when he realized that she and Andrea were stuck under the mistletoe now and there was a small crowd of wives teasing them until Nancy leaned in and easily brushed her lips against Andrea’s cheek just like she’d done when they’d first walked into the house. It looked easy for her. She made plenty of things look easy. It was one of the reasons Alex loved her.

“Your wife looks like she’s in the Christmas Spirit just fine,” Ryan teased. “Look at her down there. She’s enjoying this party as much as anyone else.

Alex sighed over at Ryan, rolling his eyes at the other man. “Of course she is. We have a lot to celebrate this year. It’s a good year. I guess I just have a lot on my mind.”

Not the least of which was this humming of heat just under his skin when he stood just a little too close to Ryan when they were alone together, or god forbid if he were to touch him. That was a lot to think about, but he’d had it under control lately. He just spent less time around Ryan and more time around the twins and Jannik and guys that he felt absolutely no inclination to be alone with. It was a little harder without Mason and Maxim who he had spent most of his time with in the previous seasons, but he’d been learning to adapt. He wasn’t looking to do anything to hurt his wife or hurt Ryan and their friendship or their team, so he was working on pushing down all of those feelings that he couldn’t explain. It didn’t make sense to have feelings like this for more than one person—why was it happening to him?

On top of all that were the struggles he’d had on the ice. He just _couldn’t score_. He played as hard as he could, but the goals just wouldn’t come no matter what he did or where he played. Even to top that off, he’d broken his jaw and now he was off the ice again for at least another four weeks and there was nothing he could do about it. He was useless to his team, useless to his wife, useless to his best friend on the team.

The look on Ryan’s face softened a little bit and he reached out to touch Alex’s shoulder a little comfortingly. “Do you need to talk about it? I’m probably not the best person but I’m sure we could figure something out. I can listen all right. Is it about your jaw? Because I was just kidding before. Your chirping does help the team, we’ll miss it a lot.”

Alex shook his head a little. “It’s a lot of things. I guess it’s just hard when you’re not playing.”

Ryan snorted a little at that, nodding. “You’re telling me. This is the first time I’ve been really healthy in so long that I feel almost like a whole different person. You’ll get there too, Burr. It’s just going to take some time. Sometimes freak accidents just happen.”

Swallowing hard, Alex nodded. He knew that Ryan was right even if the other man was only aware of a portion of his problems it was nice to hear that. It was relieving to hear that there was even a possibility that he could come back the way that Ryan had—as dominantly as he had. It had taken him a while, but once he’d been healthy he’d become a beast again. Alex wanted to be that for the team, too.

“You really look like you could use a little bit of Christmas Spirit and I’m guessing that waiting to see if we can catch coach and Lui under the mistletoe isn’t working out for you.”

Alex choked on his sip of eggnog, and shook his head. That was just something that he didn’t want to see at all. He doubted that anyone would be drunk enough to let something like that happen, anyways. Or at least he hoped. Seriously nobody wanted to see that.

“I think I’ll stay up here with you where I’m safe from all that mistletoe. I wouldn’t want to get stuck with someone down there which is obviously your big plan for the night. Get as many guys as embarrassed as possible so you have something to lord over them for the rest of the season. Just like with what happened when you got Mase so drunk last year that he could barely see straight and he started talking about how much he loved everyone and passed out upside down on your couch. You were lucky he didn’t take off all his clothes, it looked a little sketchy for a while there.”

Ryan laughed at that. “I don’t know why you think you’re safe. I don’t think that your jaw excuses you from having to kiss people as long as they’re not too rough with you, and Mason wasn’t _that_ embarrassed the next day. It was all in good fun, and he was so easy.”

Alex missed Mason. He missed Max, too. Things just weren’t the same without the two of them on the team. The locker room was quieter for sure, but there were new guys that did their best to level all of that out and he could respect that. He just grinned a little at Ryan. “I’m still going to take my chances and stick up here with you. I don’t think you’re going to risk getting caught down there with coach or with one of the twins.”

Another laugh reached his ears and Alex was sure that his face was a little red with how pleased he was that he’d managed to make Ryan laugh so much that night. It was just so surprisingly easy, and he loved it when things were just so easy between them. Maybe that was one of the things that made it hard to get rid of all of these feelings between him and Ryan.

“You’re right, I guess. I won’t be going down there until things have calmed down a little and maybe until some of the guys have torn down some more of the mistletoe, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

That didn’t make that much sense to Alex, but he just nodded along with Ryan, finishing off his eggnog with a long sip and stretching his jaw the best he could with a slight wince. Ryan’s eyes were following the movements.

“Here, come with me.”

To be honest, Alex wasn’t sure that he should be going anywhere alone with Ryan. He’d been feeling that hum of temptation just under his skin all night and he didn’t want it to get too out of control and going anywhere alone with Ryan where he couldn’t just seek out the sight of his wife to calm those feelings might put him at too high a risk.

“Where are we going?”

Ryan shrugged a little, grabbing Alex by the wrist to pull him down the dark hallway to where Alex knew Ryan’s bedroom was. His heart was pounding a little harder. He had no idea why they would be going down here.

“I have a Christmas present for you, but I don’t want the other guys to see it.”

Alex relaxed a little and nodded slowly, following a little easier behind Ryan. He hadn’t brought anything for him but they usually didn’t exchange gifts until closer to Christmas. “Why now? Can’t it wait until later?”

He was pretty sure that he shouldn’t be going with Ryan to his bedroom for sure. If Nancy knew… well, he wasn’t sure what she’d have to say about it, because he would never tell her what was going on in his mind right then. He wasn’t going to tell anyone. Probably not ever. Better to suffer this in silence.

They stepped into the room, Ryan pushing open the door and not really bothering to turn on the light. There was still enough light from out in the hallway. They weren’t really _that_ far away from everyone else. Anyone could walk down the same hallway they’d taken and find them standing in the darkness of this room. It would probably look pretty strange. They were just standing there, staring at each other.

“Where’s my present?” Alex finally managed to make himself say, because he couldn’t just keep staring at Ryan in the dark, memorizing the really weird silhouette of his head in the shadows. 

Ryan dug around in his pocket and pulled out the mistletoe that Jason had thrown at him earlier. Alex stared at it a moment, not quite understanding what the other man was trying to get at. 

“The mistletoe? That’s-- that’s kind of a lame gift, don’t you think? What, do you, uh, you want me to go and hang it up somewhere to see if we can get someone real good?”

It was dark in the room but as Ryan took a step closer to Alex, he could see that there was an unusually serious look on his face. A look that Alex didn’t really see off the ice that much. It made him swallow hard and almost step back. Almost. He probably should have.

“No, Burr, I’m not giving it to you, that’s not—for once could you just get it without me having to explain it to you?” and Ryan did sound just a little exasperated as he lifted the mistletoe up so that it hung in the air between them like the tense silence that followed immediately.

He knew that he shouldn’t have come into the room alone with Ryan. This had to be a trick or something. Something was definitely happening to him right then and he was drowning in how confused he was. He reached up to loosen the top button of his shirt hoping that maybe it would grant him a little bit of clarity. It didn’t.

“I don’t get it,” he finally said, glancing up at Ryan in confusion.

“It’s mistletoe,” Ryan said slowly. “You saw what everyone else did with the mistletoe, didn’t you?”

He nodded and licked his lips a little nervously and wished that his glass was still full of eggnog, because maybe that would make this whole situation make any more sense than it was making right now. 

“This is my Christmas present?”

Ryan just sighed and leaned in a little so that their noses were almost touching. “Yeah, so hurry up because people are going to start noticing that we’re gone soon.”

Like their wives, Alex thought. Their _wives_. But Ryan was so close to him now that he didn’t really want to waste this opportunity, the only one that he would probably ever have, and he turned his head so that Ryan could brush his lips lightly against the curve of his cheek. It made him shiver a little, the feel of rough stubble against his freshly shaven skin.

“That enough?” Ryan asked, and Alex didn’t know what he was offering. The space between them was so small and they were practically sharing the same breath and his whole face was on fire from where Ryan had kissed him and it was really hard to think. He’d been wondering about Ryan—what it would be like to kiss him, what it would be like to just be around him like this in the deepest part of him even when he’d been trying his hardest not to, and now here he was with the chance to actually find out.

He didn’t know what to do.

Luckily (or unluckily, the jury was still out), Ryan never half-assed anything, and his lips were brushing slowly against Alex’s capturing them in a kiss that was slow and easy like they had all the time in the world his hand coming up to cradle the side of his face gently, careful of his jaw. The whole kiss was careful, Alex noted, and he wished that it were a whole lot dirtier and quick and—something that would make it less confusing than whatever this was. Ryan’s tongue slid lightly against the seam of his lips and he let out a soft sound, parting his lips easily for him reaching out to grab at his shirt as their tongues slid together lightly. It was almost playful, and Alex had never been kissed like that before. He couldn’t remember why he shouldn’t be kissing Ryan until finally they were pulling apart and he was blinking a little blearily up at Ryan, releasing his shirt and letting his hands fall back to his side as Ryan’s fingers caressed his cheek lightly a moment before he pulled back as well.

“Merry Christmas Burr,” Ryan said softly, pressing the mistletoe into Alex’s hand. “That can just stay in here, if you want. Or we can deal with it, all of us. It’s up to you. No pressure.”

Alex felt like they’d just opened up a door that couldn’t be closed again and he just stood there completely still, his hand closed tightly around the mistletoe. He didn’t know what to do.

Somewhere he could hear Nancy and Andrea calling for them, and Ryan stepped back and away from him.

“Think about it.”

Alex was pretty sure he wouldn’t be thinking about anything else.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex tries to keep himself together despite the mounting temptation building inside of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally just going to let this be a one-shot, but I wanted to write more in this 'verse so badly, so it turned into a bit of a _thing_. For the record the Christmas Party took place on the 15th, and everything else just kind of falls into place after that. The results of the games are left intentionally vague because I wrote these chapters before most of the games were played and also before Burr came back from his jaw injury.
> 
> This is definitely not the Holiday fic I had intended to write in the first place. It's hardly a Holiday fic at all, really. :c Sorry.

Spending the rest of the party avoiding both Ryan and Nancy hadn’t been Alex’s idea of a great time but he was lucky that he had so many great teammates that he could hide behind and easily join in the laughter of, even if his wasn’t up to the joyfulness of theirs. He wasn’t really in the spirit of the party, and they might have noticed, but he guessed that they probably chalked it up to his injury and the fact that he wasn’t playing and let it slide without giving him too much grief. He was grateful for them, because even in their company and dodging behind a few of the guys who were taller and stockier than he was to hide from Ryan the few times he’d walked by, he was lost in his own thoughts. And there were a lot of thoughts to be lost in.

He just didn’t know how to face either Ryan or his wife. He didn’t know what Ryan expected of him after leaving him stranded and alone in the bedroom clutching the plastic sprig of mistletoe and just completely floored by the situation. To be totally honest, he still wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t a part of the prank that Ryan was playing on the rest of the house having them all kiss under the mistletoe. Ryan loved pranks. But that would have probably been going too far, and it hadn’t _felt_ like a prank. It had really felt like there had been more there than just a convenient kiss under some inconvenient mistletoe. Hell, Ryan had even brought the mistletoe with him!

The kiss itself hadn’t felt anything like a joke, either. Alex’s jaw still ached a little from the effort of trying to keep up with it. He hadn’t even kissed his wife like that since the injury, and guilt gnawed at the pit of his stomach at that thought. He held onto the feeling of it to keep himself from thinking about the kiss too much.

He’d kissed someone who wasn’t his wife for the first time since—well, for the first time he could remember in a long time. More than that, it hadn’t just been some girl he’d met at a bar when he’d had too many drinks to know any better and had let his hormones get the better of him. It had been Ryan—Ryan who he’d had these _feelings_ for going back longer than Alex cared to admit, even to himself. Feelings that he knew just as much as he knew anything else that he was not supposed to have for someone who was not his wife.

And he’d kissed him. Or had been kissed by him. The semantics didn’t really matter, because he’d kissed Ryan back, he’d been just as much a willing participant as anyone else in that kiss. He definitely hadn’t been fighting it off. He’d enjoyed it. A lot. He’d wanted it to go on and on. He hadn’t wanted to pull away from it. In fact, Ryan had been the one to end the kiss. He’d practically lost himself in it. He was pretty sure there was still a part of himself that was lost in it. Some part that he’d never get back now. Some part that would belong to Ryan whether he liked it or not. Even if the kiss had only lasted for a few seconds.

How could he possibly explain that to his wife? How could he possibly explain it without also explaining that sometimes when they were in the locker room, his gaze lingered longer than was just friendly on Ryan. He couldn’t help himself. He’d catch it and stop as soon as he realized, but it still happened even though he fought it. How could he explain all the times he lingered with his arms around Ryan after a goal, hoping to spend just an extra second sharing the same breath of air as him? How could any of those things be explained? Would she want to hear those things from him? How could she?

Did he really even have to explain any of it to her? 

Jason and Eddie had kissed under the mistletoe. A few of the other guys had to have been caught under a couple of pieces of the annoying little plant, and he was sure that their wives didn’t have a problem with them sharing in the tradition of sharing kisses. Of course he knew that it was different—Ryan had taken him into a private room to share a kiss with him, and their kiss hadn’t exactly been a chaste press of lips against stubbled cheek.

That and he doubted that either Eddie or Jason was harbouring feelings for each other. Or—well, he didn’t know all of their private business, but he was assuming.

Ryan had said that they could have just left the kiss in the room, left everything that it meant in the room and not have to think about it again, so why couldn’t Alex stop obsessing over it? Why couldn’t he get the taste of Ryan out of his mouth?

He didn’t know how he was going to face Nancy. He just knew that even though he was going to _have_ to face her at some point that night, he could avoid Ryan, just keep ducking behind other guys until the end of the night and sneak out with his wife. For the first time since his injury, he was glad that he wasn’t going to be traveling with the team on their road trip. They’d be gone for almost a week to play Minnesota, Dallas, and Chicago and maybe while they were gone he’d have the chance to put himself back together. Maybe the time spent alone with his family could get him back into the right mind set. 

Alex managed to keep himself hidden away for the rest of the party until people were finally filtering out the door and Nancy found her way to him, tangling her fingers with his. He tightened his hold on her, trying to find a steadying presence in her as they stood there for a moment. Tried to ignore the way that he was still thinking about the mistletoe he’d tucked into his pants pocket.

Tried to ignore the fact that he’d kept it in the first place.

“You okay? Ready to go home, love?”

Her voice was the steadying presence that he needed and Alex turned his gaze to her finally, lifting her hand to his lips and brushing his lips against the back of her knuckles as if to remind himself that this, this was where he belonged. He just needed to remember that.

“Yes. Take me home.”

She nodded, giving him a strange look as she tugged him towards the door. Andrea was standing there, Ryan a solid presence at her side, his hand low on her back as they bid people farewell. Alex swallowed hard. He could do this. He held a little tighter to Nancy’s hand, and she gave him a bit of a strange look again as she leaned in to press her lips softly to Andrea’s cheek and then to Ryan’s, and Alex mimicked her movements to kiss Andrea slowly, guilt heavy in his chest as he pulled back and just nodded a little woodenly at Ryan.

“See you when we get back from the road trip,” Ryan said easily, offering Alex a smile that made his knees feel just a little bit weak.

Alex nodded after a pause that was probably just a little bit too long. “Good luck. Win some games.”

They manage to get their distance from Ryan and from the party and from the whole situation as they made their way out to their waiting cab, and Alex was breathing a little heavier. Nancy glanced over at him. 

“Are you all right? You seem… different.”

Alex’s mouth was dry, his tongue heavy and stuck to the roof of his mouth. Now would have been the perfect time to tell her about what had happened. It had just been a kiss and if it really hadn’t been that bad, there was no reason why he couldn’t just tell her. 

“No, it’s nothing. Just, eugh, just sore. Too much talking,” he lied and the lie was too easy. He felt a flush work its way up his body in shame and he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to admit what he’d done to his wife. It would have taken away all of the guilt bubbling in his stomach and he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this anymore.

But a part of him felt like he wanted to keep it to himself. It had been a private moment between him and Ryan and a part of him wanted to keep it like that. Even if it was wrong.

Nancy just reached over and patted him lightly on the thigh, smiling softly at him in the darkness of the cab. “Okay, we’ll just take it easy for the rest of the night. Probably should have waited before taking you out for a party like that, but I knew you didn’t want to miss your chance to be with the team before they went on that trip.”

Alex nodded and leaned back against the leather seat, glancing out the window to watch the lights of the city pass them by. She was right. He hadn’t wanted to miss the chance to be with the rest of the team. He hadn’t wanted to miss the chance to be with _Ryan_ , as telling as that seemed now.

He was quiet the rest of the way home and while he and Nancy got ready for bed and slid into it together, her body curling just right up against his the way she always did. She obviously forgave his silence as having been caused by the fact that his jaw was still causing him some grief, and she was partially right—it still ached a little, but it was more from kissing Ryan than from anything else. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think about the softness of his wife’s body curved against his and of the way she smelled when he pressed his nose against the curve of her neck and of the soft sound of her voice telling him that she loved him and to sleep well.

He forced himself to think of his daughters sleeping just down the hall from them.

He forced himself to remember all of those things and not to think about the mistletoe he’d tucked deep into his underwear drawer where Nancy would never find it.

By the time that the Winnipeg game rolled around and he’d gotten himself dressed up and ready to sit in the locker room to watch the game in support of his team, Alex was pretty sure that he’d gotten the whole thing under control. Or as under control as he was capable of getting it. 

His jaw had gotten considerably better in the week that the team had been gone and he was getting closer to being able to do the things that he was able to normally do. He’d even kissed his wife a few times (and pointedly not compared those kisses to Ryan’s. It wasn’t a fair comparison, Ryan had been new, and that was what he told himself. New things always felt different) and had moved onto slightly more solid foods. He’d even been able to watch his team play a few of their away games.

Now that he was gearing up to watch them play at home, he was feeling just a little bit of nervousness under his skin. He wondered what it would be like to see Ryan again. He wondered if Ryan would want to bring up their kiss again of it the other man would be content just pretend like it had never happened. He _had_ been the one who had suggested that they could just let it live in that room.

Alex was nervous the whole time he had been watching the game and it had nothing to do with the game itself. He just couldn’t stop the jiggling of his leg in anxiety. By the time that the team was filtering back into the locker room at the end of the game, he was breathing a little heavier and relieved that soon he would be able to go home and there was basically a whole week off before any more games. He might even be skating by the next time they played. It would be a good holiday break, and it was a long one, starting early and lasting a day later than most other teams. It probably had to do with how many more games they’d played than so many of the other teams.

He breathed easily and sat back in his stall to watch as his team milled around talking to the media and getting changed. He probably could have left and part of him wanted to, but he felt comfortable and settled in a way that he hadn’t the whole time they’d been away on their road trip, and he wasn’t completely ready to let the feeling of that go. Even if it meant that there was a chance he could get caught having to talk for a second with Ryan.

If he were completely honest with himself, Alex would admit that he kind of wanted to be caught with Ryan. He missed his friend and he hated not talking or texting with him. It had just seemed too weird since they’d kissed. He didn’t know what to say to him.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and he would have sworn that it was just for a minute or so, but before he even realized what had happened, he felt a warm hand reaching out to shake him and he opened his eyes slowly to blink up at Ryan. Jerking a little, he jumped up to stand. The locker room was completely empty. No media and no other teammates or their families. How long had he closed his eyes?

“Hey, Burr, sorry to disturb you, you looked pretty comfortable there but I don’t think they let homeless guys sleep in the locker room.”

“Haha,” Alex huffed out, running his fingers through his hair as he glanced around. Ryan still wasn’t wearing a shirt and he was still fresh from the shower. He still smelled like the ice and that was good. Alex loved the smell of the ice. He had to not think about that, and he definitely had to not spend too much time looking at Ryan. But he was practically pinned against his stall there. “You’re kind of in my way. I can’t, uh, can’t get through.”

Ryan shrugged one shoulder, licking his lips a little and Alex’s eyes were immediately drawn to the movement. Ryan noticed and grinned a little at that. Obviously full of himself and Alex didn’t know why he had to have feelings for someone like this.

“I know. I just feel like we haven’t been talking that much since the party.”

Alex swallowed hard and his hand half reached up like he was going to push the other man away from him, but then he would have to touch Ryan’s bare chest and that sounded both like a really great idea and a really bad one.

“I didn’t—I didn’t know what to say.”

Ryan nodded and leaned In a little. Alex leaned his head back a little turning it to the side so that their faces weren’t too close together.

“What are you doing, Burr? Are you telling me that we need the mistletoe to kiss now?”

Alex frowned a little and licked his own lips nervously. “What do you mean ‘now’? We only—there was only one time, and yes. We needed it. I’m married. So are you. Maybe you shouldn’t be so, uh, so interested in kissing me.”

Ryan raised a brow and Alex couldn’t stand to look at him when he looked like that. “So you’ve never thought about it?”

He refused to meet Ryan’s gaze, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “Of course I’ve thought about it. You didn’t really give me much of a choice, did you?”

Leaning in a little, Ryan shook his head. “I think about you all the time, Burr, I think it’s only fair to share the wealth a little.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Ryan thought about him, too? He knew that there was no way that that was going to help any with trying not to think about him, but he still had to _try_. He made vows to his wife and he owed it to her to keep them. Or to at least try to follow through on them. No matter what he was feeling right then, his pulse picking up a little with the thought that his feelings weren’t as unrequited as he’d always imagined. 

“I’m married.” He said again, his voice shaking a little, even as his short fingernails dug half-crescent marks into the palms of his hands. 

“So am I,” Ryan said slowly, still not moving out of Alex’s space. “But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about you and I’m starting to think that you have the same problem as me.”

“I love my wife. I love my girls.” If he just kept saying it over and over again maybe it would calm the racing pace his heart was taking.

“I love my wife and kids, too. Just because I feel like this for you, doesn’t mean I stop loving them, Burr. But you can’t tell me that there isn’t something here. That you don’t feel something between us. I can feel it. Every single time I touch you—There’s just something there.”

Just as if to prove a point, Ryan lifted a hand to cup Alex’s cheek, thumb sliding against his bottom lip slowly. Careful as if to take care not to hurt his jaw. Alex wanted to point out that he wasn’t really that breakable anymore, but he didn’t want to say anything like that—didn’t really want to break the moment they were having.

His mouth opened almost of its own accord before he realized what he was doing, and shame spiked through him.

He lifted a hand and despite his earlier misgivings, pushed lightly at Ryan’s hot, bare chest trying not to let his fingers linger for too long. What was wrong with him? He turned his head from the all too inviting touch.

“Stop it.” He said quietly, his gaze sliding to the side, fixing instead on the large Canucks logo on one of the whiteboards across the room.

“You don’t need to fight this so hard, Burr. Alex. C’mon. It feels right, don’t you think?”

He shivered a little at the way Ryan’s voice deepened slightly when he spoke his first name. He didn’t know how he was supposed to stand up to temptation when temptation sounded like that.

Alex swallowed hard and faltered for just a second before straightening his shoulders just a little. 

“I can’t. Nancy is expecting me home soon. I should go—and isn’t Andrea expecting _you_?”

A flash of guilt made its way across Ryan’s face and he finally stepped back a little. “I don’t know how to stay away from you, anymore,” he finally admitted.

Alex was a little surprised at the admission but he lifted his gaze to meet Ryan’s anyways. The other man looked almost as confused as Alex felt. His fingers itched to reach out and do something to comfort him, but he couldn’t. Because he knew what kind of a slippery slope that might be.

“Don’t you have other things to focus on? Christmas is coming up, and there are no more games until then. The kids—you’re Santa, aren’t you? Just, uh, focus on giving them the best Christmas and you won’t even think of me once, I’ll bet. Just—we should be thinking about that instead of each other.”

Ryan winced a little at the mention of his kids, but nodded. Alex knew that the other man loved Christmas and had always loved making it great for his family. That had to mean something. There was no way that Ryan _wanted_ to cheat on his wife. This had to be just as hard for him as it was for Alex. They were only three days away from Christmas now, so there was a decent distraction for at least that long. They could just throw themselves into the holiday and hope for the best.

“What about after? What happens in the New Year when we’re back to spending all of our time together practically living in each other’s pockets? You can’t tell me that you’re not looking forward to that. Because I’m not afraid to call you a liar. I’ll call your bullshit any time, Burr. You know that.”

Sighing, Alex shuffled away from Ryan. “I don’t know what we’ll do then. Spend more time with other guys or just, uh, with each other less.”

Ryan lifted his hand like he was going to reach out for Alex again, but Alex stepped out of his way. “What would your wife say, Ryan?”

It felt weird, the idea of using Ryan’s nickname when they were being so serious with each other.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really—I haven’t thought about it, but I doubt she’d mind. I’ll tell her if that’s what you’re getting at. I doubt she wants me to be unhappy.”

Alex flinched a little again, and thought of Andrea as she’d leaned in to hug him and Nancy goodbye after the party. He thought Ryan was probably right. She wouldn’t want him to be unhappy, but like his own wife, she’d probably imagined herself as the source of his happiness and not that she’d have to hand him off to someone else to get him that happiness.

Not to mention what could happen to them if she got truly upset and they did something that got leaked to the media. It could easily change their lives and their careers whether they wanted it to or not. He didn’t think that there was anything that either of them could do have either Andrea or Nancy telling the media on them on purpose, but accidents happened all the time. It was all too easy for things to just slip out at the worst time.

It was just another reason that this—whatever was bubbling between the two of them—was the worst idea ever. He just had to keep reminding himself of all the reasons that it was bad and wrong instead of sinking into the tempting reminder of just how good it had felt to kiss Ryan and how much his whole traitorous body wanted to do it again.

Realizing that it had been too long since he’d said something, he cleared his throat. “I’m sure she’s expecting to be the source of that happiness. Not that she’s looking to, uh, outsource it to me.”

A small grin tugged at the corners of Ryan’s lips. “But you admit it. We’d be happy if we were together.”

It was exhausting to argue with him, especially when he was right. Especially when all he wanted to do was take some kind of joy in the fact that Ryan was really trying this hard to get Alex to reciprocate feelings that Alex had been feeling for longer than he cared to admit.

There wasn’t really a time for that, though.

Really, though, it just made the situation worse to know that his feelings were so much returned. It would be easier if he didn’t know that Ryan shared the feelings with him, because maybe then there wouldn’t be a ghost of a memory of a kiss on his lips and a piece of plastic mistletoe shoved to the back of his underwear drawer as a memory of something he should never let himself have ever again.

“She does make me happy,” Ryan was arguing and right. They were in the middle of a conversation. Ryan was running his fingers through his still damp hair, making it stick out in every which direction. Alex wanted to reach out and fix it, but he kept his hands at his sides. That wasn’t a new feeling. He always wanted to do that when Ryan actually styled his hair. “But Alex, you make me happy too. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Is it really so hard to get into that thick, French skull of yours?”

He sucked in a deep breath and took another step back, the back of his legs hitting the hard wood of the benches of their stalls. Every part of him was saying to step forward and kiss Ryan and that was out of the question—he’d fought it so hard tonight.

“Do I make you happy?” Ryan was asking him a question that wasn’t fair at all, and Alex sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, chewing on the plump skin anxiously to avoid answering the question right away. The look on Ryan’s face was open and more vulnerable than Alex had seen since after the 2011 Cup Final and it made him feel almost uncomfortable to be standing there.

“That’s not fair,” he breathed finally, fingers toying with his tie idly for the lack of anything else to do, and he didn’t want to do anything stupid.

“It’s a simply question. I’m pretty sure even you can understand it.”

The attempt to lighten the mood a little with a crack at his language skills was not lost on Alex, but it didn’t really have the desired effect.

“I understood it just fine, but you’re asking me to go against my vows, Ryan. To cheat on my wife.” They were alone in the room, but he still felt like the words deserved to be whispered. Like they were taboo. Ryan looked truly uncomfortable for the first time like the words were having the desired effect on him. Like maybe he was really understanding the heaviness of what he was asking Alex to do.

“I’m not asking you to do anything right now,” Ryan said slowly, his voice cracking a little. “I’m just asking you a question.”

Alex ran his fingers through his hair again. “Ryan, I—uh, I—fine. Of course I’m happier with you around. Who isn’t? You’re the soul of this locker room.”

Now Ryan looked a little frustrated, shaking his head. “You know that’s not what I meant at all. Why is it so hard to just give me a yes or no answer? It’s because I do, isn’t it? You can just tell me, Burr. They’re just words.”

“But they’re not!” Alex burst out. “They’re not just words. If I tell you what you want to hear, then I’m admitting that Nancy isn’t enough for me!” He was shaking a little with the effort of holding himself still. He wanted to run away.

Ryan took a step closer to Alex, and Alex held his breath, standing his ground. He wasn’t going to run.

“You’ve got a big heart, Burr. Bigger than anyone I know. Maybe it’s just possible for you to love two people at once?”

Alex’s breath rushed out of him at the word love. Was that really possible? Was it possible that that was how he felt for Ryan? Was he in love with him? He definitely loved his wife. Could he love them both?

Ryan had closed the distance between them while Alex had been having his internal freak out and they were practically sharing the same breath now. 

It didn’t help Alex in his confusion at all. “Is that how you feel?” He asked slowly, careful not to lean into Ryan, knowing that if he did they would probably be kissing. “You feel like your heart is big enough that you can _love_ me?”

Ryan was nodding again and their noses were brushing against each other lightly from the movement. He felt guilty on Ryan’s behalf for having admitted that. He felt like there was a betrayal in just having admitted the words. Like it was worse than if they’d just kissed again.

“I think I’m in love with you,” Ryan admitted quietly. His lips were so, so close to Alex’s.

Alex felt so nauseous at the mix of excitement and guilt that rushed to the surface at the admission. Loved him? How was it possible? How could he be loved by two utterly amazing people at the same time? He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, swallowing hard past the lump in his throat.

“No you can’t be. This is just—uh—just a fling. A fancy. You just need to get it out of your system and then you’ll go back to normal,” he insisted. That had to be it. This was insanity. His heartbeat was roaring louder in his ears than he could ever remember it doing before.

Huffing out a breath, Ryan’s hand came up to cup the back of Alex’s neck, stroking the sensitive skin lightly. His body heated immediately at the touch without his permission.

“How am I supposed to get you out of my system? I kissed you and all I’ve wanted since then is to do it again.”

Alex was familiar with the feeling.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, because I don’t know a way of getting you out of my system that doesn’t include getting you into my system first.”

That sounded dangerous. It sounded like a possible solution. Like a chance to get his hands on Ryan and to touch him and kiss him and—it was a solution for sure, but it was probably a bad one. It sounded like a slippery slope.

“What are you saying?”

Ryan tilted his head a little, their noses still touching and their lips still so close. Alex should probably move away soon, but there was something in Ryan’s eyes now. A spark of an idea.

“I’m saying maybe a little taste of you and I’ll get you out of my system, if you’re really so sure that we can’t—that there’s nothing we can do to be together. Maybe it will get me out of your system, too. We don’t have to tell anyone, if you don’t want to. Or we could try to tell everyone if that’s what you think is best. But maybe if we just need to, just once, get it all out of our systems we could just keep it to ourselves.”

It was hard for Alex to focus on anything that Ryan was saying because every time he moved his lips they came even closer to kissing.

Could he really do something like that? Could he really break his vows to his wife just to try to get Ryan out of his system? On one hand he felt like he was already breaking them having all of these thoughts about the other man, about possibly being in love with him. That little voice in the back of his mind was whispering to him how much worse could it possibly be to just give into it one time? Just to get it out of his system. Maybe he owed his wife that much.

But he wasn’t so desperate that the thought of his wife’s face wasn’t enough to have him focusing back on reality as much as possible and realizing that he just—he had to put a stop to this thing before it went too far. 

Alex closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath through his nose, giving himself one last minute to enjoy the space he was sharing with Ryan.

He thought maybe Nancy might understand. It was just different with Ryan. Maybe she would understand that he just couldn’t help himself. Just one little blemish on the otherwise perfect picture of their marriage. He wouldn’t do it again. Just this once. She’d always known him better than anyone else in his entire life, so maybe she’d even understand this whole thing better than he did. 

He lifted a hand to brush it against Ryan’s rough cheek, feeling the other man huff out a breath of relief against his lips. He was so close to just giving in. Just this once—

The familiar hiss of the door to the locker room sliding open shocked him full back to reality and he jumped back from Ryan like he’d been burned and he shoved Ryan away from him as he fell back into his stall.

He couldn’t believe what he’d been so close to doing. He’d almost given into the temptation he’d been fighting so hard and just because for one split second the argument that Ryan had made to him had made sense. How stupid could he have been? That was not a reasonable solution at all.

“What the Hell are you two still doing here?” Kevin asked, heading through the locker room and back towards the trainer’s rooms.

“Avoiding your hideous face, what else?” Ryan threw at him, his face a little red.

Kevin just threw up the middle finger and continued on his way. Alex straightened his tie with shaking fingers and stood on unsteady legs. Of course they hadn’t really been alone. How could they have been so stupid? Someone could have walked in on them at any time, just like at the party. What was wrong with them? Were they looking to ruin their careers? Their marriages?

“I have to go,” he managed to gasp out, hurrying for the door.

“Burr wait—“

Alex didn’t even turn around as he made his way through the sliding door and out of the locker room. He was still shaking and a little unsteady on his feet and he’d forgotten his suit jacket in the locker room, but there was no way he was going back for that. He just needed to get home to his wife. He needed to see her. He _needed_ to. 

He needed to remember why Ryan was such a bad idea.

His chest was aching and his eyes were burning as his blinked quickly in succession. He needed to get as much distance from Ryan and this whole place as possible. It wasn’t home for him tonight. 

He was trying to do the right thing for both of them—for all of them.

But so then why did it feel so wrong?


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmastime in the Burrows home isn't the distraction that Alex was hoping it would be.

Christmas was about as good a distraction as Alex could ask for. His girls were both too little to really understand what was going on, but they had matching smiles on their faces when faced with piles and piles of shiny wrapped gifts covered in bows. It was something special to watch Nancy prop Lexie up between her legs and help her tear off the paper wrapping while Victoria sat beside him doing the same thing with a bright smile on her face as she opened up more toys than she could ever need, looking just as interested in the wrapping as she was in the gifts that were under it. It made something settle in his chest that he hadn’t known had been quite so out of whack.

He was in charge of distributing the gifts from under and around the tree to the girls and he smiled as he watched Victoria open up yet another gift, lifting up a doctor’s playset. He raised his brows at Nancy who had clearly been responsible for purchasing that particular gift. 

“What? You can never start too young or shoot too high!” she claimed with a grin.

They laughed it off together as the girls moved onto their next set of gifts, piles of toys being pushed off to the side and ripped up paper being shoved into trashbags at the other side. They spent most of the morning like that, until the girls looked like they were tired out from it. By the end of it there were just two gifts left under the tree, and Alex knew that they belonged to him and Nancy.

He grabbed first for the slightly messily wrapped one that he knew was the gift he’d gotten for her. He passed it over with a bit of a sheepish grin. She unwrapped it carefully, pulling out a white gold necklace with a heart pendant that had their daughters’ birthstones laid into it. He’d already known that she’d love it. He’d gotten the idea from Ryan who had gotten a similar gift for Andrea for their anniversary the year before. Nancy had talked about how beautiful of a gift it had been the whole night after their anniversary party, and he’d taken the hint that she would have enjoyed a gift like it. So he’d asked Ryan for the name of the jeweler that he’d used. 

Of course now it seemed strange to have taken advice like that from Ryan, given their current circumstance. But it had been too late to change his gift idea and it had seemed like a great one. He did think that Nancy would love it regardless of whether or not it had been his idea in the first place.

It had an easy enough setting to change, too, in case they had more children in the future. That was one of the things Nancy had loved about it when she’d seen it on Andrea. Not that he was in _any_ place to be thinking about more children right then. 

Not when he was already wondering how Ryan had fared so far today. If he’d managed to put Alex out of his mind at all, or if he was already thinking about Alex the way that Alex was already thinking about him.

Damn it.

He wondered if Ryan had handed the gifts out to his children and if they had squealed with delight at the toys they found as they’d unwrapped them. Makayla was a little older now; she’d understand the concept of Santa a little more and would probably be delighted at the idea of finding gifts under the tree. Even Ryker was a little older than Victoria and would probably understand a little bit of what was happening around him. Alex wondered how different Ryan’s Christmas was from his own.

Nancy smiled softly as she opened her gift and glanced up to nod at Alex. “It’s perfect, thank you,” she said happily as she leaned over their children to brush her lips against the curve of his cheek. “We can even add more jewels if we decide to have another. You know how us girls are—any excuse for more jewels,” she teased, and Alex laughed a little, though his stomach churned a little uneasily. He knew she was just joking, but he couldn’t help but to feel a little panicked at the thought even though he’d had it himself.

Alex fumbled a little under the tree until he came back with the immaculately wrapped gift that Nancy had tucked under the tree for him, and he sat back on his heels and unwrapped it slowly. He didn’t deserve any gift from her. Just having her by his side was gift enough.

It wound up being a watch. The watch he’d been eyeing for the last few months and had been oohing and ahhing over buying for himself. Silver and thick with a shiny face and a little bulkier than guys like him usually wore. But he loved it. It was very much his style. She’d obviously put thought into the gift. He smiled over at her and slid it over his wrist, clasping it on tightly.

“Thank you, love. It’s perfect. Exactly what I wanted,” he said softly, reaching over the pile of squirming bodies that were their still playing children to hold her hand. This was why he’d said no to Ryan. This was why he had to continue saying no to Ryan.

 _Ryan_.

It still felt like something was missing, though. If the holiday party hadn’t happened, maybe he would still feel that obnoxious confused pining for Ryan, but there was no way it would be anywhere near as bad as it was now, knowing what he knew. All that wondering at taking just the one chance at getting Ryan out of his system. Their systems, because this was affecting Ryan, too. He couldn’t forget that. His brain had frozen on that possibility a few times already.

He stared down at the watch, twisting his wrist so that it glinted in the light, distracting him a little. 

“Here, will you put this necklace on for me? I want to wear it today,” Nancy was asking him, and who was he to deny her anything that she wanted. Especially such a small thing. He pulled his thoughts away from Ryan and nodded, walking on his knees around the girls to where she was sitting cross legged on the floor. She pulled her hair out of the way and he took the necklace from her, his fingers trembling just a little as he carefully wound it around her neck and clasped it shut. Working on instinct, he leaned the rest of the way in and pressed his lips to the spot just above where the clasp lay and kissed her softly, feeling her shiver just a little under his touch.

She still tasted sweetly of herself. So different from how he’d imagined Ryan to taste. He had to stop thinking like that. Had to stop making all those little comparisons that just made all of this so much harder. One of them was already his—Nancy had married him, promised herself to him for the rest of her life. More than that, she’d given him two beautiful children. She was perfect. She was his match.

Ryan was just—Ryan. There was an undeniable heat between the two of them that Alex didn’t even understand. There was more than that, too. Ryan had said he was falling in love with Alex, and Alex knew that there was a part of him that reciprocated that feeling exactly. There was nothing he could do to stop that fall. Ryan just understood a part of him that Nancy could never understand about him. 

Ryan understood the part of him that lived only for the game.

He understood the rush of sliding onto the ice for every game, putting everything else out of his mind except for the need to win. To get those two points and to show the other team regardless of who they were, that he was a part of the better team. The need to throw his body at every other coloured jersey on the ice. The willingness to take a hit that would leave bruises and a deep ache the next day to make a play that might not lead to anything at all. Just on the off chance that it might be the play that could win them the game.

Ryan understood the addictive qualities of the game. How he was more than willing to leave everything behind to play it. Including his family. Especially when they were winning. Even when they were losing and they just wanted to play more so that they could find a way to win and to fix their record, to even out those points so that they could climb back up the standings and into their rightful place.

Ryan understood how impossible it was to actually leave everything at the rink when he went home. How the feelings of loss or of a major failure would linger long after he went home for the night, no matter what was waiting for him back home at the end of it all.

Ryan just understood and Nancy couldn’t.

It wasn’t her fault. Alex didn’t even want her to understand. He thought that it might hurt her to understand things the way that Ryan did. But maybe that was a part of what made Ryan so appealing to him. The fact that the other man understood him so completely. 

He wondered if he could use that as an excuse for why he had woken up twice that week curled away from his wife hard and sweating and breathing hard. He’d dreamt of simply saying yes to Ryan that night in the locker room. Of hot lips all over his body, of a hand calloused by years of holding his stick, of muscled skin under his fingers, of a cock pressed hot against his own and chapped lips capturing every sound that fell from his lips. Of ears that didn’t even understand the words he’d be muttering to him, but that appreciated them anyways.

He shivered a little and Nancy glanced back at him. “Are you cold?” She asked worriedly. 

Alex flushed a little and shook his head. “No, sorry. Just had a shiver,” he said as he pulled back slowly. She was still smiling at him as his fingers fell from the back of her neck and he swallowed hard. How could he be thinking things like that so close to his wife?

He needed to live in the now. Not in the fantasy world he’d created between himself and Ryan in his dreams.

He couldn’t help but wonder if having these kinds of thoughts while he was with his family and trying to celebrate with them was worse than if he’d just given in that one time in the first place. How long was he supposed to keep living like this?

Was there a possibility that getting it out of his system could possibly work?

Could anything work at this point?

“Alex?”

He blinked back over at his wife who was trying to get his attention and offered her a small smile.

“Sorry, you look beautiful. I got distracted.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. She was beautiful. It just hadn’t been what had distracted him. But he felt like he owed it to her to say anything that would make her feel good in that moment. After the things that he’d been thinking.

She did smile at him for that. “Well you can be distracted by that later all you want. For now grab Lexie and let’s get the girls dressed for breakfast.”

Alex nodded and scooped up his younger daughter, carrying her up the stairs and into her room. Maybe just following a familiar Christmastime routine would help to soothe his racing thoughts. It couldn’t hurt anything. Surely being surrounded by his family should be helping more than this. He imagined that Ryan was probably having an easier time at this than he was.

But why should he even need his family to keep him distracted? There was something so very wrong with all of this and he felt so very ashamed with himself for all of it. Shame that burned deep in his bones as he tugged Lexie’s pajamas off of her carefully, stripping her down to her diaper almost by reflex. He had been the one who had suggested that they just focus on their families for the holidays in the first place, and now he was the one who couldn’t even do that much. What did that say about him?

Clearly everything was not all right.

“You doing all right?” Nancy asked as she paused in the doorway on her way to Victoria’s bedroom, the squirming toddler in her arms.

“Of course, you already did all the work. Her dress is even pulled out already. I just have to put her in it.”

Nancy smiled and nodded at him as she continued down the hallway talking softly to Victoria, soothing her until he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying anymore. He glanced down at his daughter and sighed. She was reaching up for him from the changing table and he lowered his head so that she could grab at his nose, scratching it lightly with her fingernails and making a soft, contented sound that had him smiling a little against her belly. 

His chest ached a little and he wondered as he lifted his head just a little so that he could press his lips against her chubby cheek, why this wasn’t enough for him anymore. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her a little unevenly, blinking several times to try to clear his stinging eyes. Her fingers were tugging at his hair a little painfully and he pulled back slowly, carefully extricating her fingers from his hair. 

He would do just about anything to be a better father to his girls. To give them all the attention and love that they deserved, instead of just a fraction of his attention. They deserved so much more than that. He couldn’t think of two more perfect creatures in the whole world that deserved anything more.

“You almost done?” Nancy’s voice filtered to him from down the hallway and it jerked him back to reality as he reached for the little red dress, tugging it carefully over Lexie’s head, pulling her arms through it and managing to get all the buttons done up as quickly as possible with the practice of someone who got dressed and undressed often, before she could squirm or crawl out of his way. She was a fast mover. Maybe it was partially because of the guilt still bubbling in the pit of his stomach, but he didn’t even try to get the tights on her. She didn’t look like she really wanted to wear them and he didn’t want to fight her to get them on her. Nobody would know the difference, anyways.

“We’re ready!” He replied quickly, gathering his daughter back up into his arms before she could crawl away and carrying her out to the doorway as Nancy was coming down the hall, holding hands with Victoria who was all dolled up in a matching dress to her sister’s. He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair lightly.

“You look beautiful, princess.”

He was going to be joyful for his family today. They weren’t going to suffer just because he couldn’t stop thinking about his teammate. They weren’t going to suffer just because he was in the middle of a never ending fall for a man that he could never—and should never—have. He would find a more permanent solution to his Ryan problem later. For today he just needed to be Alex Burrows husband and father of two. It sounded like it was going to be hard, but he could do it for his wife. She hadn’t done anything to deserve a husband who had to force himself to think about just her instead of another man. He imagined she’d be a little horrified by the whole thing if she knew, and he didn’t want to think about what she might think. 

The necklace he’d given her was sparkling around her neck and he tried to focus on that instead, because if he could just focus on _something_ for a second, maybe his thoughts would stop racing.

“There, now we’re all dressed and we look like a civilized family. We can have breakfast and take some pictures for our parents. Or—maybe we should take the pictures first?”

Nancy looked so happy standing there with him and their girls and that was what he should have been focused on.

He had the perfect family that anyone would have envied him for.

He could do this. He could smile and get through the day because it was a good day and they were going to make it a great one and it was Lexie’s _first_ , and that meant something too. There were going to be a lot of pictures and it was a milestone for them as a family. He wasn’t going to be the thing that dragged them down.

He wasn’t going to spend his time thinking about something that he couldn’t have. He was going to think of what he was already lucky enough to have. His wife. His girls. His career. Things other people would kill to have.

How hard could it be?

They made their way down the stairs and Alex was feeling a little better about the whole thing as they stepped around the pile of toys still in the middle of the living room floor and towards the kitchen.

“Hey honey, look.”

He glanced above his head to where Nancy was pointing and froze. There, hanging from the entranceway to their kitchen was a piece of plastic mistletoe reminiscent to the piece still hidden away in his underwear drawer. In fact, for a second, he was worried that she might have grabbed it from there.

“I got the idea from Ryan and Andrea. I thought it might be a nice piece of Christmas Spirit and kind of romantic. Since we didn’t get stuck together at all during that party.”

His stomach was in knots and his daughter was still in his arms , but he leaned over to brush his lips almost chastely against his wife’s before pulling back and readjusting the way he was holding Lexie.

Nancy shot him a confused look. “Are you all right? Is your jaw still hurting? You should have said something.”

Alex felt guilt like bile in the back of his throat and swallowed hard around it before he reached out and tangled his fingers in her hair. It wasn’t fair to do this to her. He tugged her in slowly and tilted his head down to capture her lips in a real kiss, slow and still soft but definitely not chaste. She made a soft sound into it and he pulled back slowly, pressing another soft kiss to her lips before pulling away the rest of the way. Her eyes were still closed and she was smiling a satisfied little smile.

“That’s better,” she sighed.

Instead of feeling better for having done it, Alex felt worse, guiltier, like he’d done something horrible. He wanted to rip the mistletoe off the wall, but instead just stepped into the kitchen and slid Lexie into her highchair. 

“Always glad to satisfy you,” he chirped lightly not really feeling it. He loved her. Kissing her wasn’t a chore. Loving her wasn’t a chore. 

Why did he have to keep repeating those things to himself?

He had to do _something_ about this. He couldn’t just keep living this way. He owed it to himself. More than that, he owed it to his wife. To his family. He had to solve this problem.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A New Year's Eve party gone all wrong. Or right. Depending on how you think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figured I'd better increase the rating starting from this chapter, because it only gets a little more graphic from here on out.

It seemed like the team would use any and all excuses they could to host a team party and the holiday season was the perfect chance to have as many as possible in as short a time as possible. It had only been two weeks since the Christmas party, but still they were already getting ready for a New Year’s Eve party. Usually Alex would have been as excited as anyone else at the prospect of yet another party, but since the last one, he’d been dreading this one ever since his wife had brought it up a couple of days ago over breakfast.

He’d almost wanted to beg out of going to it but that would have seemed more suspicious than any other behaviour. Everyone knew how much he loved the holidays and their parties.

Nancy had been looking forward to it, anyways, and by the time she had been all dressed up and made up and ready to go she was beaming widely at him. The necklace he’d gotten her for Christmas hung proudly around her neck, catching the light and shining against the pale skin of her throat. She had obviously been looking forward to showing it off.

“Are you ready, love? I’m ready to be your arm candy for the night. How do I look?”

He smiled at her, trying to calm his nerves. “You’re stunning as usual. I couldn’t have expected anything else from you.”

She leaned in and kissed him softly and it did stir some warmth in the pit of his stomach. It was good to know that he could still feel something other than confused or panicked when his wife kissed him, and that he didn’t always need to compare it to how it felt to be kissed by Ryan.

Once she pulled away, though, he was back to worrying about being in Kevin’s house with the rest of the team and Ryan again. That was how this whole mess had started, more or less.

He’d done a good job of getting out of the arena for the game against Philadelphia the night before, but pretty soon he’d be playing with them again and there’d be no more sneaking out of the locker room before anyone saw him or could talk to him, because he’d have to be a part of the team again. He would just have to find a solution before then or it was just going to get worse and it really—he couldn’t deal with worse than this. He could barely deal with this as it was.

He caught himself back to reality to realize that Nancy was calling out to him. “Come on, let’s go!”

He nodded and they left the house together sliding into their cab and giving the driver Kevin’s address. It had just made more sense to take a cab than to have either one of them drive for the night. It was New Year’s Eve after all, and Alex was pretty sure he was going to have to get pretty drunk to survive the night. 

It probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with his problems, but it was what it was, and he was ready to accept that about himself.

They arrived at Kevin’s house a little later than most of the rest of the team, and Katie pulled open the door for them with a wide smile. “There you two are! You’re usually the first ones here, but better late than never, right? Wow, Nancy you look great! Alex you look good too, I guess, but you’re starting to slack a little next to this lady beside you, come in come in.”

They stepped around her and into the house, and Alex exhaled at the warmth of the house as it enveloped him. It was more than just the temperature, too. Everything about Kevin and Katie’s house was warm and welcoming and he felt a strange sense of warmth settle over him. It felt nice and it felt pressure free. Something that even his own house had been lacking. Not that he was blaming Nancy for that, but in his own house he felt like he needed to be better all the time to make up for the fact that he wasn’t a good enough husband or father.

Alex smiled a little at Katie as he turned around to kiss her cheek lightly and strip his jacket from his shoulders. “Thank you for hosting, Katie. Where can I hang this?”

She took the jacket from him and reached to take Nancy’s, too. “I’ll put them away, don’t worry about it. Why don’t you go and get drinks and mingle with the guys so they don’t think I’ve stolen you away?”

Nancy laughed a little. “I think I’ll stay with you, Katie. You know how they get when they first see each other. It’s all about hockey with these guys, and when it’s not hockey it’s all about us and how interesting is that?”

Katie returned the laugh and shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know, sometimes hearing how great a wife I am is good for my confidence.”

Nancy smiled a little and nodded. “You’re right. Let’s put these away and then let them get through their hockey talk and then we’ll go out and find them when they’re in the middle of talking about us. Sounds like a plan to me.”

Katie nodded and the women walked off together towards the room that Alex assumed they were using to host the jackets. He felt a little like he was being teased by them, but just shrugged it off a little and turned towards the rest of the house. It was good that Nancy was enjoying herself already and that she had such good friends in Katie and Andrea and the other wives and girlfriends there.

As he made his way through the space he noted that there was a station set up near the kitchen with beer and what looked like a table of bottles of the stiffer stuff. Good. Just what he was looked for. That would be where he would be spending a good part of his time tonight. It seemed safe enough.

He made his way through the foyer which was still lit up with Christmas lights, though the ornaments and everything else Christmasy had already been taken down. Kevin had really been on the ball this year. Though he kind of thought that it might have been Katie who had taken charge of the clean up duty. Or that she had made Kevin do it. Either way, all that organization didn’t smell like Kevin.

He made his way through the crowded room easily to the table set up just outside of the kitchen and grabbed a large plastic cup that he quickly filled with ice and the first bottle of vodka he saw before splashing a little bit of cranberry juice into it to change the colour to a soft red. It should take the edge off of the anxiety he had about seeing Ryan again.

There was a small group of guys standing around the drinks table and he sank into their conversation easily when he realized that Ryan was not a part of it. Mike leaned into him a little as he took a long sip of his drink, and he made a face at him. “Whoa, Burr, you looking to get drunk or something?”

Alex enjoyed the familiar weight of his teammate against him and how it felt like _nothing_ but the weight of another guy leaning against him. No heat, no need, nothing. No hidden meanings. Just Mike leaning against him. Why couldn’t Ryan feel like that?

He took another long sip of his drink and felt guilty for ever thinking it. How could he possibly wish that someone didn’t love him? It was all so confusing and it didn’t seem to be getting any better.

He licked the sticky sweetness of the drink from his lips, enjoying the warmth of the drink already swirling in him before reaching out to ruffle Mike’s hair and answering him. “What about you, Santo? What are you drinking tonight? Just beer to prove how manly you are? You know it will take twice as much of that to feel as good as one of these will make me feel?”

Mike made a sound in argument of that, but took a long swig of his beer anyways. Alex grinned at him.

Lost in all of the drama he’d been drowning in was how much he loved being with his team—how much they made him feel like he was always among brothers when he was with them. He’d never felt more like he belonged than he did as a member of the Canucks Organization. Whatever it was, the thing with Ryan that he was tangled up in—it was stealing away that feeling of belonging. He missed it.

“You’re just jealous with your girlie drink over there, Burr. Don’t you know that Kev left that stuff out for the ladies?”

Alex grinned a little wider at him. “I know. That’s why I’m even more surprised that you’re not drinking it, Santo. I feel secure enough in my, uh, in my masculinity that I can drink anything that I want.”

Mike spluttered a little, stubbornly taking another sip of his drink.

“Fuck you. I can drink anything I want. I could have a vodka and cranberry if that was what I really wanted. I _want_ to drink beer.”

“No, Santo, I don’t think you could pull it off.”

Alex’s shoulders tensed a little at the familiar voice and he had to fight to keep the smile from slipping off his face. He couldn’t let anyone see that he was anything but happy to see Ryan. He _was_ happy to see Ryan.

His pulse quickened just a little and he had to fight the urge to lean into the warmth of his space at all. This wasn’t the place for that. There wasn’t ever a place for that.

“Fuck you, Kes, I don’t see you trying anything.”

“Oh please,” Ryan said easily, leaning against the wall and sliding an arm around Alex’s shoulders. It was almost impossible not to lean into him then. What was he doing? What was Ryan doing this to him? He could practically smell the beer on his breath and that probably had something to do with it. Great. He held perfectly still, barely breathing.

“I could rock a Cosmo and still look twice the man you look with your beer,” Ryan was stating.

Alex took another long sip of his drink. He wasn’t drunk enough for this yet. He hoped that no one else had eyes on that bottle of vodka tonight. It was his.

“Yeah sure, whatever you say. Have another one why don’t you, Kes.”

Ryan just shrugged and scooped Alex’s drink out of his hand, taking a swig of it. Alex just stared at him wide-eyed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Mike obviously couldn’t, either.

“You two are way too close. That’s way weirder than sharing Gatorade at the rink, man.”

Ryan just handed the cup back to Alex who took it and whose gaze followed the movement of Ryan’s tongue as he licked his lips. He licked his own lips in response almost subconsciously. 

“It’s actually not half bad. Maybe you should try it.”

Alex held the cup a little closer to his chest.

“Hey you guys can make your own, I’m not sharing any more. This is mine. You’re just rude.”

Ryan’s arm slid away from Alex’s shoulders and Alex immediately missed the warmth of it. He shouldn’t have been thinking of that, though.

“Yeah, I’ll pass. You guys are too weird even for me. I think I’m going to get another beer like a normal person and join the party. You two just do… whatever it is that you two do.”

Alex felt himself colour a little at that and cursed inwardly. They couldn’t be so obvious about it. He stood silently by Ryan’s side as Mike grabbed another beer for himself and then waved at them as he walked away.

They stood in silence so close but still much further apart than Alex’s hyper aware body wanted them to be. If he closed his eyes he could almost see the Ryan he’d dreamed up, naked and pressed against him. That was definitely the drink thinking.

It was a Ryan that he could theoretically have if he just said yes to him.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Ryan finally broke the silence between them, surprising Alex a little. He didn’t know why it surprised him at all. Ryan hated long silences and he loved to fill them with the sound of his own voice. Alex usually didn’t mind at all. He loved the sound of Ryan’s voice, too. Wasn’t that a part of their problem?

“Maybe a little,” he admitted after another long pause. “But can you blame me? Last time was, uh, it was almost a huge mistake.”

Ryan licked his lips again and this time Alex looked away. He couldn’t keep staring at Ryan. It would be too obvious, and this place was too public. Even if their wives didn’t see them, there was still the chance that one of their teammates or their wives or girlfriends _would_ see them. There were just so many eyes and ears around. He should have felt safer than he did.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, Burr. Even at Christmas. All I could think about was you. This isn’t normal and it isn’t going away. At least not for me. Tell me that it’s going away for you. I dare you.”

Alex swallowed hard and refused to meet Ryan’s gaze. He felt hot all over, but only half of it was from shame. The other half was from the pleasure of knowing that he wasn’t the only one who had been stuck thinking about them when there had been more important things to think about. 

Really, he was just glad that Ryan was keeping his voice down.

“Of course—we already talked about all of this, Kes.”

Ryan reached out and their fingers brushed together lightly for just a fraction of a second, warmth blooming through him from the contact. 

“See? I know you feel it, too. And we never really finished that conversation. I have the feeling that you were going to agree with me until we were rudely interrupted. My feelings are almost always right about that sort of thing. I’m a real intuitive guy.”

Sighing a little Alex tried not to find anything about what Ryan had said endearing. It was annoying how right he was. Alex had been a breath away from agreeing to something that would have changed his life forever. He still thought about it constantly so in a way it _had_ changed him. He hated Ryan a little for that. As much as he was capable of hating him, anyways.

“If you’ve already figured it out on your own then what do you need me to admit anything for?”

Ryan made a soft sound of frustration and from the corner of his eye Alex could see his fingers twitch. Alex wondered if he was aching to touch him the way Alex was aching to be touched by him again.

He was betraying his wife so much. There was no way it was okay to have these thoughts about another person. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t another woman.

“I told you that I was falling in love with you,” Ryan hissed and Alex glanced around them a little nervously to make sure that nobody could hear what he was saying. Everyone seemed pretty interested in their own conversations, luckily. But this was still so risky. 

“Don’t say things like that where people can hear you!” he urged, panic obvious in his voice.

“Would you rather go somewhere more private? Because now I’ve got you, you’re not getting away from me until we deal with this. It’s not just you that’s having troubles, Burr. It’s my life, too. It’s not just you who’s lying to his wife and not being a good enough father. It’s me, too.”

Alex swallowed hard and wondered how Ryan knew that he was having those problems unless he was really having just as much trouble with it all, too. Was it possible that he’d thought this whole thing was too easy for the other man?

“Ryan, we shouldn’t—“

Ryan just shook his head. “You’re not running away on me again tonight. Please let’s just talk about it.”

Alex was actually pretty sure it would be easy enough to run away from Ryan in this crowd. What was the other man going to do? Chase him down in public? But there was something in the tone of his voice that tugged on something in Alex’s chest and he found himself reaching to refill his now empty cup because he was actually going to agree to this. 

“I don’t know what else there is to talk about. We’ve already talked ourselves in, uh, in circles. I don’t know what else you want me to say, Kes.”

He lifted his gaze so that he could meet Ryan’s eyes and sighed. He knew there was no point in arguing with him. He was going to do it. Anything to get rid of that look on Ryan’s face.

“All right, where are we supposed to go? This isn’t exactly your house with your rooms that we can just duck into. There are people everywhere.”

Relief was obvious on Ryan’s face and Alex felt a double dose of guilt for having made the other man worry. What kind of situation had he gotten himself into? There was nowhere good a conversation between the two of them in private could go. As had been proven in the past. There was something different about this time, because he was going into it knowing that something might happen and he was still doing it. That meant something, and it wasn’t something good.

“How about Cole’s bedroom? Nobody should be going there and it’s far enough away from the party that it’ll be quiet.”

That sounded safe enough. He doubted anything too bad could happen in their teammate’s son’s bedroom. They weren’t _that_ desperate for each other’s attention. He hoped.

“All right. Okay. Let’s go. We can’t be gone too long, because people will notice we’re missing, and we don’t want our wives to come looking for us and finding us alone in another room—it would be weird.”

It was weird that he had to be concerned that his wife would find him alone with one of his teammates. He felt a gnawing of guilt already that he’d agreed to this. It was only going to get worse as the night went on, he was sure.

Ryan just pushed away from the wall easily and gestured for Alex to follow him.

“Of course I don’t want them to find us. I love my wife, you know.”

Alex felt a little sick with that thought.

Before they were completely out of sight. Alex glanced over his shoulder to catch sight of Nancy, her head thrown back in laughter at whatever Katie was saying to her, her other hand resting lightly on Andrea’s arm as they stood together in a small circle, and he hoped that last glimpse of her would help him get through whatever he had to do with Ryan.

He tried to shove the shame away as they made their way down the hallway towards where he knew Cole’s bedroom was. He was doing this for her, too. He needed to get this thing worked out, because there was just something… not right about feeling like this about a teammate. About someone who wasn’t his wife. Even if the only person that line of thought made feel better was himself, at least it made someone feel better. God, he was being so selfish.

Ryan cracked open Cole’s bedroom door and peeked inside before pushing it the rest of the way open and stepping inside, gesturing for Alex to follow him before closing the door behind them. Alex leaned heavily against it, glad for something to lean against again. It gave him a little bit of distance from Ryan, too, even if it wasn’t much. He couldn’t shake the thought that he was doing the wrong thing.

“There, now we can actually talk.”

Alex took a long sip of his drink until there was just a little bit left at the bottom of the cup and carefully placed it on top of the dresser beside the door.

“Stop that. Don’t act like you need to be drunk just to have a conversation with me. Things haven’t gotten that bad. You used to talk to me all the time. About all sorts of things. About everything.”

Alex wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glanced towards the cup wishing it could fill itself back up. That would be a cool trick.

“Yeah, but that was before you told me that you loved me and took me into your bedroom to kiss me under some mistletoe like this was some, uh, some romantic movie. Things are a little different now.”

There was a look of frustration on Ryan’s face now. “But I don’t want them to be different. I miss you, Burr. Alex. I miss hanging out with you. I miss my best friend. I’m not sorry I fell in love with you—or maybe I am, because this whole thing is a fucking mess—but if I could take back all these feelings and trade them in for my best friend, I would do it in a heartbeat. I wish I could go back to loving my wife and taking care of my kids and then just hanging with you and the guys like nothing had happened, but I can’t do that, because there’s just too much here. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Alex swallowed hard and licked his lips. “Why did you kiss me in the first place?” He’d been wondering it for a long time now.

“I thought what harm could one little kiss do? I was just going to kiss you on the cheek at first. That had been my plan. With the mistletoe and everything I figured it would be okay, just in the spirit of the holidays and everything. I figured we could even tell the girls about it if we wanted to, a joke or something. Laugh about it after. I didn’t think it would lead to all of… this. Now I don’t want to share it with anyone but you. It feels… private. I especially don’t want to share it with Andrea. What if she told me I couldn’t see you again? I had no idea that a little kiss was going to be like opening Pandora’s Box. I’m sorry, Burr.

Alex didn’t want to admit that it had been more than just a kiss for him long before it had even happened, and so he just bit down hard on his bottom lip. Ryan reached out and touched his cheek lightly. 

“Don’t do that. Talk to me.”

Alex closed his eyes at the touch. This was what he’d been afraid was going to happen if he was alone with Ryan. It felt so nice to be touched by him.

“I don’t know what to say. We’re both stuck like this now. I can’t stop thinking about you, either. Even when I’m with my family. Even when I’m _asleep_.” He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that there would be something of a satisfied smirk on Ryan’s face. That was just the self-satisfied part of the other man that he was all too familiar with.

“You dream about me? Are they hot dreams?”

Alex frowned a little as he finally opened his eyes and crossed his arms just so that he’d have something to do with his hands.

“It’s not funny, Ryan. I sleep beside my wife and I’m having dreams about—well, about you.”

Ryan huffed out a breath and dropped his hand even as he took a step closer to Alex, closing the distance between them.

 

“I’m sorry, but it’s the same thing for me, I’m thinking about you always. Even when I’m dreaming, I’m always dreaming about you. I dream about things we haven’t even done yet.”

Alex felt heat rush through him at the combined thought of that and at the sudden closeness of their bodies. This was so dangerous. His face felt embarrassingly hot, and he tightened his grip around himself.

“What does that even mean?”

Ryan grinned a little at him, shifting his weight and Alex felt like he should have probably been moving away from him, but he was all but pinned against the door and if he were completely honest he would admit that he didn’t really want to move away. He’d known that this was coming since they’d left the bustle of the party.

“It means that I dream about getting you out of my system.”

Alex shuddered a little at the thought. How many times had he woken up sweaty and shaking from the same dream?

“Do you ever think about getting me out of your system, Alex?”

Alex blinked his suddenly heavy eyes a little, and dropped his arms from where they’d been cradling his sides, and suddenly realized just how close they were to each other now.. He could see how wide and blown Ryan’s eyes were from this close up. He was sure that his weren’t much better.

“What do you think I’m dreaming about?” he breathed hotly. “Tape-to-tape passes?”

Ryan let out a surprised laugh and Alex could feel it against his face. They were too close again and how was he going to get out of this situation without letting it go any further than this? Hadn’t he promised himself that he wasn’t going to betray his wife anymore? Weren’t the thoughts bad enough that he didn’t need to back them up with actual actions?

“I want you so bad I’m burning with it,” Ryan admitted. “Half the time I’m worried I’ll forget to breathe, because all I’m thinking about is you.”

Alex closed his eyes again and was tempted to lick his lips, but they were so close now that he knew he’d get Ryan’s too if he did so.

“I want—I want you, too, but you know it’s not normal for us to want each other like this, right?”

He could feel Ryan nodding his acknowledgment of that point. “We have to do something though, Alex. Even you have to agree that this thing is getting out of control. Maybe if we just get it out of our systems…”

“What if that just makes it worse?” he argued. “What if that makes us need each other even more than we already do?”

“If it doesn’t work then—then I guess we tell our wives and let them help us.”

The idea of telling Nancy that he’d tried and failed to stop loving someone that wasn’t her made him ache a little and a nauseous feeling rolled in his stomach. Maybe they would just have to make it work. _Have_ to. Because he didn’t want to have that conversation with her. No matter what happened, he didn’t want to have that conversation with her. So maybe just one time, and they would get it out of their systems.

“If we just did it one time to get it out of our systems. I’m not saying that we’re going to or anything, but if we did and it worked, we could never tell anyone. Not Andrea or Nancy—it would ruin them. We couldn’t tell _anyone_.”

Ryan nodded, both hands coming up to cradle Alex’s face.

“We’re not going it here, either. For godssakes we’re in Cole’s bedroom.”

Again, Ryan nodded but made no move to step away from Alex. “Of course not.”

“And it won’t be like an affair, either. Just a one time thing. Just to get it out of our systems. I don’t want to cheat on my wife. Then things will go, uh, they’ll go back to normal.”

It all sounded stupid and fake and _wrong_ even to his own ears, but it was what he wanted to hear. It was what he needed to hear.

“I understand. Just the two of us. Just one time to get it out of our systems. That’s it. Then we can go back to being just buddies and husbands and fathers and everything will be okay again.”

It sounded much better when Ryan said it. Maybe because he sounded like he actually believed what he was saying.

“I’m going to kiss you now, just to seal the deal okay?”

Alex should definitely have said no to that. It didn’t make any sense in the parameters of their agreement, but instead he was just nodding along. Ryan was already tilting his head down a little and capturing his mouth, kissing him firmly on the mouth.

Even though he’d kissed his wife just that morning, it felt like he’d been waiting forever to be kissed like this. Or maybe just the two weeks that it had been since he had been.

Ryan’s mouth on his wasn’t as careful as it had been the first time. It didn’t need to be. His tongue was slipping past his lips and into his mouth to slide against his own slowly, eliciting a soft sound from him.

It had Ryan pushing the full weight of his body against Alex and pinning him to the door. His fingers came up to clutch at Ryan’s dress shirt, wrinkling it in the front as he grabbed at it and held on tightly. He was pretty sure he’d had a dream that had started like this once.

All coherent thoughts were gone, though, by the time Ryan had slotted a leg between his and was pushing his thigh hard up and against his cock through the layers of gratefully thin dress pants. He was lost in the sensation of grinding down against the pressure of that, rotating his hips a little and panting hard into Ryan’s open mouth as the other man grabbed at his ass to help the movement of his hips until they heard the familiar sound of Kevin’s voice calling their names from far down the hallway.

It made Alex freeze up. He’d been so close—so close to coming right there and in his pants like a fucking teenager, and he flushed all the way to the tips of his ears as he pushed Ryan off and away from him. That wasn’t following with the one time and then they were going to be done thing at all. And, God, they were standing in the doorway of Cole’s bedroom. How much worse could they get?

He untucked his shirt and tried to think about how awful he was for having betrayed his wife so close to her until he was sure that he could walk out of the room without his erection being too obvious. Ryan on the other hand just reached down his pants and adjusted his until it wasn’t that obvious. Right there. In front of Alex. Like he didn’t have any shame at all.

He probably didn’t.

Alex swallowed hard and licked his lips still tasting a little of the beer that Ryan had been drinking there.

They were really going to be doing this. They were going to have sex and they were going to get each other out of their systems and then he would have a day sometime soon when he could go home with his wife and not be obsessed with the thought of Ryan going home with his own wife. That was a day that he could look forward to.

“I’m going to kill Kevin,” Ryan was muttering under his breath, his fingers coming up to fix his hair a little.

Alex shook his head slowly. “No, it’s good. We weren’t supposed to be doing this now or here anyways. Our wives are here. We should be with them. The countdown is probably pretty close, that’s probably why they’re looking for us. I told you they’d miss us if we were gone for too long.”

Ryan sighed and flattened down the bump in his dress shirt from where Alex had been clutching at him. It was still wrinkled. It would serve as a reminder to Alex for the rest of the night that he’d lost himself all too easily in the sensation of just being with the other man. He had to get that under control.

“Go and find your wife then,” Ryan said softly. “I still need a minute before I’ll be ready to join the party.”

Alex swallowed hard and forced himself to look away as he grabbed his mostly empty cup and hurried out of the room. He stepped around Kevin with a mumbled explanation that he’d just been looking for an extra washroom, and searched for his wife who was still standing with Katie and Andrea.

He still felt hot all over from Ryan’s mouth and hands. He didn’t know how that would make it all right to kiss his wife at midnight. How did people ever do stuff like this? Cheat on their wives and feel all right about it?

“Everyone find your partners, it’s almost time for the countdown!”

Alex found Nancy and wrapped one slightly shaking arm around her waist, holding her lightly against him. She leaned into the touch, tilting her head back up at him with a small smile. Shameful guilt was coursing through his veins as she settled against him. He could do this. He was doing it for them.

“Have you seen Ryan?” Andrea asked him and he could barely stand to look at her as she glanced around the wife looking for her husband who had just been kissing him silly. Was it always going to be like this? Was he always going to feel worse than garbage? He assumed so, and he deserved it, didn’t he? He was doing the worst things that he could possibly do to these women.

“Oh, nevermind there he is!” she said, waving her hand over to Ryan who was making his way out with Kevin from the direction of Cole’s bedroom. Kevin looked a little confused to see him, but Alex hoped he wasn’t asking too many questions. The last thing they needed was for one of their teammates to figure out what they’d been up to. 

“I see mine, too, I’ll see you guys in a little while,” Katie said with a smile as she left them to join Kevin.

Ryan stepped up next to Andrea who leaned into his side. They were all standing together now, Alex and Ryan standing beside each other so that they were almost touching with their wives at their sides. He could hear the team starting the countdown to midnight.

“TEN! NINE! EIGHT—“ Nancy glanced up at him. “Come on, you too!”

He smiled down at her and nodded, joining in on the countdown, dreading what would happen at the end of it. “FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”

Everyone turned to their partners as the countdown reached one and he was no exception, tilting his head down to catch his wife’s lips in his own and kissing her softly. It was nothing like the thorough kiss he’d received only a few minutes earlier, but he forced that out of his mind. It was still nice. It was Nancy and he belonged to her. 

He tensed just a little in surprise when he felt Ryan’s fingers tangle lightly with his own, but didn’t pull away from the touch, just twitching his fingers into the touch so that Ryan would know that he understood. They were lost in this thing together. Neither of them was alone in it.

There was a little bit of a refuge in that, although as he stood there with one arm wrapped around his wife kissing her, and the other hand almost holding Ryan’s, he thought that he didn’t deserve even the slightest bit of refuge offered to him in this storm he’d created for himself.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin Bieksa, the world's most effectual cock block.

Telling himself that he was doing it for his wife and the sake of his family didn’t actually make him feel that much better about the whole situation. It was more like a band aid. One of those band aids that refused to stick to your skin no matter how many times you tried to force it to stay and just hung there uselessly.

If he’d thought that finally setting on a way to get all of the thoughts of Ryan calmed down and actually, well, out of his mind, he couldn’t have been more wrong. 

He traveled with the team the day after their game against Tampa Bay in hopes that he would be able to get back into the lineup as soon as possible. Really, he was hoping that it would be as soon as the Los Angeles game, but he knew that he might have to wait until the Anaheim game, depending on what the coach was thinking and how well he skated in practice. He had been taking contact now, and he’d gotten pretty used to the facial guard he had to wear to keep his jaw protected. He just hoped that the coach saw that he was as ready to play as he felt like he was.

He tried to focus on all of that, all of the game stuff, but on the flight seated next to Roberto and across from Ryan and Kevin playing a hand of cards; it was easier said than done. He lifted his gaze across to Ryan to catch the other man already looking at him, cradling his hand against his chest and he tried not to be too obvious about the way his breath caught a little in his throat. Ryan’s gaze was hot and it was still directed at him, even though he was leaning a little heavier than usual into Kevin. That had Alex feeling more confused and a little unsure of the situation.

Really, he was sure that if either of their poker companions were to look up from their own hands, they would know right away what was going on between the two of them, because it would be written all over Alex’s face. This whole thing was getting so dangerous, and his poker face in any other circumstance was hardly the best on the team. He doubted it would be much better in this one, where he actually needed it to be good.

“You in, Burr?” Kevin was looking at him now and he had to turn his attention to him, forcing his gaze away from Ryan and swallowing hard.

“What? Oh, uh, no, I fold,” he said slowly, facing his cards down on the table. He hadn’t really been paying attention to what they’d been doing anyways. Ryan’s gaze turned to him again and by the time the game had ended, the other man had accumulated the majority of the points they had been playing for. How had he been able to keep such good focus? I t irked Alex. It wasn’t fair. When they were alone, Ryan seemed to have just as much difficulty with the feelings they had for each other as Alex did, but when they were out in public, he was like the master of keeping himself under control. Alex just didn’t understand how he could go from one to the other when he had so much trouble with it himself. Ryan was leaning so heavily against Kevin’s side now, too, that he might as well have been in his lap. He looked so comfortable, and Kevin didn’t even seem to mind. Alex frowned at that. What was going on there?

They landed in Los Angeles and Alex stepped off the plane a little relieved to be out of Ryan’s space. He’d felt a little like he was choking on his choice to take this thing of theirs one step further ever since he’d made the decision. It really had been his last ditch effort to regain some control over his out of control life, though. What other options had been left for him? For them both?

Short of one of them asking for a trade or something like that. But that was just something that couldn’t happen. Wasn’t even an option for either of them, really. It would have completely changed their families and it would have affected the team and who knew if it would have actually been a possibility? They’d work this thing out on their own long before they’d ever do something as desperate as asking for a trade.

He grabbed his small rolling suitcase and headed for the bus, breathing the warm Californian air deep into his lungs. It was going to be fine. Soon they were going to do this thing and then it was going to go away and he could go back to just loving his wife, his children, and this sport that he was lucky to play for a living. The things he was meant to do in life. 

He collapsed heavily into his seat beside the window, resting his head against the glass. He barely noticed when Roberto sank into the seat next to him.

“Hey, bud, what’s up? You haven’t seemed like yourself this whole trip. You sucked even worse than usual at cards today. I was starting to think that you were letting Kes win. Which you should never do. That guy has a fat enough head as it is. Pretty soon he won’t be able to skate around carrying that thing with him and sad as it is to say, we need him.”

Alex shook his head. A part of him wondered if it would be easier if he just had someone he could confide in. Someone who wasn’t Ryan. He doubted that someone like Roberto who had what seemed to be the perfect family life could understand what was he was going through, though, and he already felt so guilty that he didn’t think that he needed yet another voice in his head telling him what a horrible person he was, doing what he was doing with Ryan.

“It’s nothing,” he lied. “Just getting back into the swing of things again.”

Roberto lifted a brow, not really looking like he was buying what Alex was selling for a single second.

“Really? Because you’ve been spinning your wedding ring around your finger since we were on the plane.”

Alex glanced down at his hands and realized that he was, in fact, doing that. He wondered how long he’d been doing it for and how many of the guys had noticed him doing it.

“Don’t worry,” Roberto said simply, seeming to sense a bit of the panic that Alex was feeling. “Half the guys around here don’t even notice their own problems at home. They don’t care about yours. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

It seemed so very tempting all of a sudden, but he had to keep in mind that he’d be breaking Ryan’s confidence too, if he told someone. It wasn’t just his secret to tell. He couldn’t say anything even if it made him feel so very alone.

“It’s not really something I want to talk about, Doctor Phil,” he chirped easily, trying to keep his tone as light as possible, even as Ryan and Kevin made their way down the aisle, laughing and looking entirely too easy with each other. What were they up to? Why did he suddenly feel so uncomfortable about them? An irritated heat lit deep in his belly and was he really being jealous?

That incessant itching under his skin as his gaze followed the two down the aisle and into their own seats implied that yes—what he was feeling was definitely jealousy.

What right did he have to feel jealous? Ryan didn’t belong to him. Maybe he ought to have been glad that Ryan seemed happy around Kevin. Maybe he was busy falling in love with him, too, Alex thought a little bitterly. He should feel glad. If Ryan was splitting his attention then maybe they wouldn’t need to do anything about their feelings. Maybe Ryan wouldn’t feel them anymore and Alex’s would just fade on their own as soon as they weren’t reciprocated.

He glanced away from them when Ryan caught him staring and turned his attention back to Roberto who was looking at him with a disturbingly thoughtful look. That couldn’t mean anything good for him.

By the time they were collecting their room keys, Alex had gotten himself all worked up, his thoughts a jumbled mess about Ryan and Kevin and worrying about Roberto trying to figure out what was going on (that man was too snoopy for his own good), and he was shocked out of his thoughts by the feeling of fingers brushing against his and glanced up to see Ryan standing beside him.

“Meet me at my room,” Ryan was muttering under his breath, flashing the numbered envelope at Alex before he walked away. Alex grabbed his own envelope and swallowed hard. He wondered if this was it. If Ryan was going to tell him about Kevin now.

He stopped by his own room first to drop off his own suitcase, leaving it by the door, hoping that he’d managed to shake off Roberto who had been following closely behind him. He was glad that they weren’t sharing rooms with teammates anymore. 

Alex couldn’t help but to stop in the washroom for a second to glance in the mirror at his own reflection, fixing his hair just a little from where it had gotten a bit mussed up from being on the plane and the bus. The glint of his wedding ring in the light caught his attention and he pulled his hand back to stare at it a moment. It meant so many things, it meant his vows and his family and all of those things that he’d left behind in Vancouver and things that he was trying so hard not to think about too hard now that he was trying to focus on working out these feelings that he had for Ryan, trying to get them out of the way so that he could be the man who deserved to wear that ring. He swallowed hard and slipped it off his finger. In case something was to happen between him and Ryan, he didn’t want to be wearing his ring when it happened. It wasn’t like the ring was a cognitive being and it could see him, but he still felt like somehow it would remember and if he wore it—like somehow he’d never be able to take it back.

He placed the ring carefully on the counter top for safekeeping and stepped out of his room to head just down the hallway for Ryan’s room, knocking quietly on the door hoping not to garner any unwanted attention from any of their more curious teammates. It only took a second or two before Ryan was pulling the door open and it was obvious that he’d been waiting by the door for Alex to come to his room. That made something that had been tight in Alex’s chest loosen considerably. Even if Ryan had moved on from him, he was still hopelessly in love with him. It needed to be reined in and controlled, but it was definitely there in the quickening pace of his heart.

“Come on in, I’ve been waiting.”

Alex wasted no time stepping into the hotel room, careful not to step too much into Ryan’s space. He could feel the warmth emanating from the other man even at this distance already. He didn’t even need to be any closer than this. Ryan closed the door tightly behind them and Alex heard it click in the silence between them before Ryan turned his attention back to him.

“Fuck, you looked so hot on the plane. I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep my hands off of you,” and Ryan was using his body to box Alex up against the wall and he felt like they’d been in this position so many times before, now. But it always felt like the first time, somehow. He breathed in deeply, taking in Ryan’s exhale of breath and the smell of his cologne. 

“Are you serious? I thought—what about Kevin?”

Ryan’s brows furrowed and he frowned a little, shaking his head but not putting any distance between them. “What are you talking about? What about Kevin?”

Alex licked his lips, his tongue coming so close to catching Ryan’s lips in the process. “Don’t you—I thought maybe you and him… uh…”

Ryan’s frown deepened and he pulled away from Alex, crossing his arms. “You thought I was hooking up with _Kevin_? Why the Hell would you even think that? You think I’m just working my way through the team?”

Alex flushed darkly and shook his head even though he’d come close to thinking something very much like that. “No! I just—you looked so comfortable with him and I thought it would have made sense if the two of you were—I mean, uh, he’s a good guy and you’re a good guy—“ and the more Alex thought about it and the more he talked about it, the dumber it sounded, even to his own ears.

Ryan’s gaze turned thoughtful for a second before he reached out to cup the back of Alex’s neck, thumb sliding against the curve of his jaw. “I get it now. You’re jealous, aren’t you? You thought I’d changed my mind or moved on or something didn’t you?”

Alex turned his face into the warmth of Ryan’s hand, so that he wouldn’t have to look at him in the face. His own face was burning with shame. Shame for so many things. Shame for doing this in the first place, and especially shame for having the audacity to feel like he had the right to feel possessive of Ryan in any capacity. 

“Come on, you can tell me, Burr. Tell me how you were worried that you’d lost me to a cooler, younger guy. Even though this is supposed to be just a onetime thing, you can’t help but feel it, can you?”

Alex heaved a sigh against Ryan’s hand. “Fine. For a second, maybe, I was, um, maybe a little jealous. We have a deal, right?”

Ryan leaned in and Alex could see the glint of _his_ wedding ring when he framed Alex’s face with both his hands. It made Alex feel a little uncomfortable and he bit back the request that Ryan take it off. He might ask him next time. Next time?

Alex tried to comprehend that thought, but Ryan’s fingers were sliding through his hair and he was being kissed very thoroughly. Ryan was sucking lightly on his tongue before pulling away just enough to bite at his bottom lip. Alex let out a soft groan, reaching up to tangle his own fingers in Ryan’s hair, mussing it up as he responded in kind to the kiss. Kisses weren’t so bad. If Nancy ever found out about these kisses, he was sure that he could explain the kisses away at least. They were probably some of the least offensive things that happened between the two of them. Less offensive, for sure, than most of the thoughts Alex had about Ryan.

“C’mon, babe, open your legs for me a little,” Ryan was breathing into his mouth and the endearment caught his attention as much as the instructions and how quickly his body moved to comply. He wondered idly in the back of his mind if Ryan called his wife babe, or if he’d been saving that for Alex and if that really mattered to him.

It did, a little bit.

Ryan grinned against his mouth and slid a leg between Alex’s, thick thigh pressing up against the thick hardness of his cock. He groaned at the feel of it, his head falling back against the wall and wondered if this was how they were really going to end this. If it was really going to be as easy as this.

“Don’t get too excited. I don’t want you to come,” Ryan was breathing into the air between them, and Alex groaned a little in frustration. Then why were they doing this? 

He must have spoken out loud, because Ryan was huffing a breath and shaking his head. “Not like this and not tonight. Tonight I just want to give you a little taste,” and his mouth was sliding over the curve of Alex’s jaw and for a second Alex was afraid that he might mark him.

“Be careful,” he breathed between moans as he pressed his hips down into the movement of Ryan’s thigh up against his cock. It felt great. It had been so long since he’d felt like this. Or maybe just since New Year’s Eve, but that seemed like so long ago now that they were like this again.

“I’ll come if you keep—“

Ryan cut him off, kissing him long and deep, one hand coming down to grab at his ass, the other sliding between them and cupping his balls through the almost too-thin fabric of his pants, massaging them lightly as he continued to move. Ryan was helping the movement of his hips along, grinding his hips down against his thigh and the friction against his cock felt so good. He was sure he was going to come, too, his balls were pulled so tight up to his body, heat coursing through him and his mouth was hanging open, his eyes squeezed shut and he was so close, so close—

All of a sudden there was a banging on the door and he just about jumped out of his skin, grabbing handfuls of Ryan’s shirt and holding his whole body entirely still.

“Who is that?” he whispered, swallowing hard as his heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears.

“I have no idea,” Ryan answered honestly, looking just as strung out as Alex felt.

“Kes, man, it’s time for dinner, everyone’s heading out already. You got Burr in there? Lu said he saw him go in there with you.”

Alex sighed a little and pushed Ryan away from him just a little so that he could catch his breath and try to calm his body down a little bit. Kevin’s voice was like a bucket of cold water being dumped over his head.

It was always Kevin. Honestly.

And of course Roberto had seen him go into Ryan’s room. He should have been more careful. Though he wasn’t sure how that would have been possible. He’d been pretty careful in the first place. It was just inevitable that occasionally their teammates would see them together. They’d just have to come up with some excuses.

“Yeah, we’ll be out in a minute!” Ryan called out to Kevin.

Alex breathed heavily and pushed Ryan the rest of the way away from him so that he could run his fingers through his own hair trying to straighten it back out. How had he gotten himself into this mess twice? Wasn’t once bad enough?

“We’d better go.”

Ryan nodded and straightened his own hair with a bit of reluctance.

He hovered there for a moment before finally speaking. “When do you think we should really..?”

Alex cleared his throat and began straightening out his clothes as he waited for a response. For all that he’d thought about them doing this thing and getting it out of their systems and they’d come close a couple of times now, he hadn’t thought of _when_ or even where, aside from the fact that it should be away from home. On the road. Away from their wives and families. He hadn’t even thought about _what_ they would do. What would happen between the two of them. Sure, he’d dreamt about it a few times too many, but they’d never come to any agreement about what would happen between the two of them. He knew there would be a lot of kissing and touching . For sure a lot of touching. He didn’t even know how far he wanted to go, to be honest. Only that he wanted to go there with Ryan.

“I don’t know. On the road, right?”

Alex nodded, agreeing with that at least.

“Not on this road trip. It’s too short and the games are back to back. How about next road trip? There’ll be a day between games. Same teams and everything.”

Alex licked his lips. It was weird to be planning their sex like this, but he guessed that it was a necessary downside to being the other party in a relationship. Not that they were in a relationship. Not really.

“All right, that sounds good. Until then, we should probably be hands off, don’t you think?”

Ryan frowned a little. “I don’t think I can. When I’m alone with you, all I want to do is kiss you, and when I’m not alone with you, all I want to do is be alone with you so that I can kiss you.”

Alex was sure that he shouldn’t feel as good hearing that as he did. There was something so wrong with them. So wrong.

“But still. We’re not supposed to just be giving into all of this like this. That’s why we’re getting it all out of our system in one go.”

Ryan shook his head slowly. “This is all a part of it for me. Just until we get around to actually doing it. Don’t tell me to stop now that I’ve had a taste.”

Alex shook his head. “We shouldn’t get used to this thing, Kes. It isn’t healthy.”

“Well this is just how I get it out of my system, okay? It’s nothing, Burr. Not even as bad as all the thoughts I’ve had about you while I get myself off in the shower, is it? I do that in my own home. At least I’m doing this here.”

To be honest, Alex didn’t know how to argue with that logic. Or if there was any arguing with it. Or if he even _wanted_ to argue with it. Scratch that, he already knew that he didn’t want to. That was why he was so sure that they shouldn’t do it. But it was all just leading up to their one time and getting it out of their systems. How dangerous could it really be?

“All right then, but we’ve got to be way more careful about this thing. We almost got caught tonight.”

Ryan fixed his clothes a little, readjusting his pants where they were bunched up a little.

“By who? Kev? He’s just the most unintentional cock block of all time. He doesn’t know anything,” he tried to assure Alex, exasperation obvious in his voice.

Alex rolled his eyes, a little frustrated by how easily Ryan was taking something so serious.

“No, not him. By Lu. He saw me come in here. He’s been watching me. He knows there’s something going on with me, and you know how he gets when he gets curious about something.”

An annoyed groan passed through Ryan’s lips as he stepped in Alex’s space once more, causing Alex to draw in a sharp intake of breath.

“Well then, we’ll just have to be sneakier.” Ryan sounded every bit like he was talking about the weather instead of talking about sneaking around behind their teammate’s backs and trying to actually get away with it. It was infuriating.

Alex was getting ready to argue with him, but then Ryan was kissing him chastely and pulling away from him and he was leaning in a little trying to get more of it without really realizing that that was what he was doing.

Ryan had an entirely too wide shit eating grin on his face when he pulled away and turned to slide his feet back into his shoes.

“You going to be okay to go to dinner or are you still pitching a tent down there?” he chirped over his shoulder.

Alex’s whole face flushed hotly and he crossed his arms, willing the hardness of his cock to go down just for the sake of proving Ryan wrong. The other man could be a dick when he was too pleased with himself. The extra kiss hadn’t really helped things at all, though.

“Fuck you,” he said without any real heat. He breathed in and out deeply and reached down to adjust his cock in his pants. There. It shouldn’t be that noticeable now.

“How are you not that, uh, affected by all this?” Why was it always him? It didn’t do much good for his ego that he was always standing panting and hard for more while Ryan stood just a little disheveled in front of him at the end of every encounter. Not that he was in any state of mind to have really been thinking about how to make the other man want him more. That wasn’t where he was supposed to be. It was supposed to be about wanting each other less, not more.

Ryan just raised a brow and his hand darted out to grab Alex’s before he could react and held it to the front of his pants where Alex could feel the hardness of his cock pressed up towards his stomach, It made his mouth go completely dry. It was the first time he’d had his hand on another guy’s junk before, but having a handful of Ryan’s cock even through the fabric of his dress pants didn’t make him feel panicked at all. It made him feel warm all over and not at all like going out to dinner with the guys.

“Oh. Uh. Oh.”

Ryan held Alex’s hand there an extra couple of seconds or so before finally releasing his hold on it. “I was a horny teenager once. I got very good at hiding it when I was turned on. It comes in handy at times like this when I have to go to dinner with the team when I’d much rather be here with you. Satisfied now?”

Alex wasn’t sure what he was. He really didn’t want to go out to dinner with the guys now, but if they didn’t go, it would seem very suspicious and Roberto already had enough cause to be suspicious of them.

“Yeah, I’m better now.”

Ryan nodded and looked him over from head to toe. “Okay good, because we don’t have any more time to waste. We’re already late. It’s time to go. You look good enough.”

Alex made a face at him and stepped closer to the door as Ryan pulled it open. Stepping out into the hallway, he was surprised to see that Roberto was already out there waiting for them.

“What took you so long?”

Alex felt a little like he was going to choke on his tongue he was so surprised to see the goalie there.

Ryan, however, was on the ball and ready for just about anything. “We were waiting for a good part of the movie to pause on.”

Roberto looked like maybe he didn’t believe them. “What movie?”

“Anchorman.” Ryan answered without even pausing. Alex was impressed by his ability to lie to their teammate.

“Oh? Why didn’t you invite me to watch it with you guys? I love that movie.”

Ryan snorted. “Your feet stink and you talk through the whole thing.”

“So does Burr,” Roberto pointed out.

Alex made an indignant sound. Both men ignored him.

“Yeah, well, one of you French guys is bad enough for me. I have a one limit of you in my room at a time and Burr already called it.”

Alex almost choked on his own spit at that, but Roberto was just staring at Ryan a little as they made their way to the elevator. Alex pushed the button.

“Burr, where’s your wedding ring?” Roberto’s question caught him a little off guard though he guessed that he should have expected it. “Weren’t you wearing it on the bus?”

Alex knew that Roberto knew that he’d been wearing it on the bus. His heart began beating a little faster.

“My fingers were swelling a little from the, uh, altitude of the flight. I had to take it off.”

“Jeez, Lu, what are you? The Inquisition? Give the man a break,” Ryan broke in, shaking his head at Roberto as they stepped into the elevator. Alex let out a puff of breath.

Roberto just shrugged a little. “I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t lost it or anything.”

Alex thought that his lie had been a good one. He’d really thought on his feet. But Roberto was giving him that same thoughtful look again. It couldn’t mean anything good for him at all.

Dinner was uneventful, the only thing of note was that everything seemed to go along with his luck so far on the trip and he lost the credit card roulette and he wound up paying for the entire meal for the guys that had opted to go out for the dinner. It wasn’t a big deal, but nobody liked to lose. Alex least of all.

“Wanna come back to my room?” a slightly intoxicated Ryan was breathing into his space as they shared a cab back to the hotel after dinner.

Warmth flushed through him like bath water and he wondered when he’d become okay with this. When had he stopped hating himself for every lingering glance and spared thought. What was he becoming?

“No, I think it’s better if I go back on my own, Kes. Game tomorrow, remember?”

Ryan breathed and annoyed breath and leaned back against the smooth leather of the seat. “Fine, fine. But maybe after the game tomorrow—“

Alex shook his head. “We’ll be headed to Anaheim. And then we’ll need to get all the sleep we can for that game. These games are no jokes, Kes. We need these points. We haven’t managed to beat these stupid fucking teams all season. We can’t just—even if we’re stuck working this out of our systems, hockey comes first. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

He could see Ryan’s face colour in the light filtering into the cab from the streetlights. 

“I miss the Burr from earlier. The one who was just as stuck in this mess as me. What did you do with him?”

Alex frowned. “”I thought you would care more about your _job_ than this thing between us.”

Ryan smacked his hand a little wobbily on the seat between them. “I don’t care about _anything_ more than this. Don’t you get that?”

Alex was pretty sure he’d stopped breathing for a second before he shook his head. It had to be partially the drink talking. Ryan wasn’t like this regularly.

“We have to put the team first, Kes. You know that. I know you do. You’re a team guy. You’re _the_ team guy. This thing is just fucking both of us up. The sooner we deal with it, the better.”

Ryan tilted his head back and nodded a little solemnly and Alex was definitely sure it had been the drink talking. There was no way that Ryan actually thought—there was no way that he was putting something like these ridiculous feelings between the two of them in front of their team and their game.

“You’re right. The team is family. I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired of always feeling like this. Of always wanting you but always having to hide it.”

Alex was perfectly comfortable in hiding his feelings for Ryan. He’d done it for so long and he was so aware of how wrong they were—and besides that, he loved his wife and knew that this thing with Ryan was going to be a one off, so what would be the point in telling anyone about them? He couldn’t really understand where Ryan was coming from this time. 

“I’m sorry,” was what he settled on saying. 

Ryan just closed his eyes and silence settled between them a little awkwardly for the rest of the ride back to the hotel.

On top of the guilt he already felt for what he was doing to his wife, of having turned himself over so easily to Ryan’s touch, he felt guilty for not matching the intensity of Ryan’s feelings. Or, well, he knew that his feelings were just as intense. He was still betraying his wife and his family for these feelings that he had for Ryan, but as far as hockey was concerned… He’d just worked so hard to get back into the lineup again and he didn’t want to do anything to risk that. He didn’t want to do anything to risk the points the team had been working so hard to build up, and he knew that if Ryan had been thinking more clearly, he wouldn’t want to risk any of those things, either. Alex had never met a guy as team oriented as Ryan. He always put them first. It was a good part of what had always made him so attractive to Alex.

For Alex, as he was struggling to find sleep that night, it was further proof that this thing between them was destructive and wrong and needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Not just for the sake of their families now, but for the sake of their team.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex has a little bit of a crisis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how long exactly it will take for Burr to come back from his injury, but I wrote this chapter when they were saying that it would be 4-6 weeks, so I picked five weeks as an approximation. So it was just a kind of guess.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kind words everyone is leaving in the comments, and the kudos, they make my day. I appreciate them so much! C:

It seemed almost underwhelming, his return to the lineup. He’d adjusted all right to his new face gear even if it had, in fact, garnered a few new chirps on the ice. More than half of which had come from his own teammates. They’d played well if maybe a little boringly but the games and the road trip had been short and uneventful aside from his homecoming on the ice.

He’d kept his distance from Ryan ever since that cab ride, trying to keep his attention focused on the games at hand and finally playing. It didn’t even for a second dull the want in the pit of his stomach every time he saw Ryan skate across from him or at meal times when he sat down near to Alex, and Alex got to revel a little in the warmth of their closeness without feeling too guilty. 

It was perfectly normal for teammates to eat together and they were never alone. Always groups of players, David or Mike or Dale or Kevin, joined them and always, always Roberto. It kept what could have been a potentially dangerous or too intimate situation from becoming either of those. Those two nights with such limited physical contact with Ryan—it was the most faithful he’d been to his wife since the whole thing with Ryan had started. Except for the thoughts. The thoughts hadn’t stopped or even slowed for a moment. In fact they seemed to become more intense the longer he stayed away from Ryan.

He hadn’t missed the long, confused looks Ryan had been shooting him, either. The distance had been abrupt after having spent that day so close together and obviously Ryan hadn’t been a fan of it. But Alex felt that even though it had been hard for him also to be apart from Ryan, this had been the best way to prepare for their games.

They were showered and cleaned and finally alone as the rest of the team had already headed out to the bus and Alex knew what was going to happen before it even occurred. 

Ryan grabbed him by his tie, pulling him into a kiss that was all open mouthed and sloppy and he was pressed awkwardly against the back of the visitor’s stall that had had his name on it just a few minutes ago. He drew a deep breath in through his nose and he could smell Ryan, the scent of his cologne and the sharp tang of sweat that still lingered even after he’d tried to wash it off with the soap that smelled the same in every arena across the league. It was never good enough, the smell of sweat always lingered, and Alex found that he actually liked it in this moment, wanted to inhale more of it. It just reminded him that Ryan was a hockey player. Strong and big and _great_ at his craft.

The kiss was dirty and messy and lacked all of the finesse that their earlier kisses had had, and Ryan’s hands were all over him, and Alex didn’t mind it at all. It was pretty fucking great.

All of the thoughts of why they shouldn’t be doing it right now, all of the work Alex had put into maintaining a healthy distance from Ryan were gone. He just opened his mouth a little wider for the kiss, accommodating Ryan’s tongue.

It was quick and hungry out of necessity. Who knew who was still lingering in the building or how long they had together before someone came back for something, but lord how much Alex had missed this. It was more like going home than getting on that plane and actually going home seemed like it was going to be, and it was that thought more than anything else that had Alex pulling away from the kiss and pushing Ryan away from him. He was breathing heavily.

“We’re not supposed to do that here.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes a little, but took a step back to give Alex room to breathe a little.

“We haven’t been doing that at all. You’ve been avoiding me everywhere but on the ice.”

Alex licked his lips a little and wondered if they were swollen from the pressure of their kiss. He didn’t know how he would go about explaining that away.

“Because I wanted to focus on trying to get some points out of this road trip. I know you care about that, too.”

“Of course I do, I just believe more in myself and my ability to multitask than you apparently do.”

Alex just threw his hands in the air before going to straighten his tie from where Ryan had grabbed it and tugged it loose.

“You played well tonight,” Ryan was saying, fixing his hair carefully, making sure that it was all sticking up in just the right places. Alex wondered when he stopped thinking that it looked ridiculous. “Nobody would have thought you were playing with Darth Vader’s face mask on.”

“Haha,” Alex huffed out before pushing away from the stall. “Nice Kes, just insult the injured guy you were just making out with. Real sweet of you.”

Ryan just shrugged at Alex and threw an arm around his shoulders. Alex thought about shrugging it off, but it felt so good and it wouldn’t look weird to their team to see them like this. Hopefully Roberto had calmed down from his detective schtick in his post game routine and Alex wouldn’t have to worry about him.

They headed out of the arena and out to the bus, and Ryan finally let him go when they boarded so that he could go and sit beside Kevin and Alex could slide into the window seat beside Roberto whose game day routines usually lasted long past the end of the game. Apparently, though, the snoopy side of him was taking charge tonight and he spoke much earlier than usual.

“You took a while to get out of there. What were you guys doing?”

Alex almost jumped in surprise.

“We, uh, Kes was fixing his hair. You know how he is about that.”

Roberto turned to look at Ryan who was chatting easily with Kevin. 

“It looks awful.”

Alex swallowed hard and did his best not to look guilty. “Doesn’t it always?”

Roberto eyed him evenly for a moment before he nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

It was getting more and more obvious that Roberto thought he was figuring something out and Alex wondered not for the first time… what if?

What if Roberto did figure them out? What if he became someone that Alex could talk to after this was all over about what he’d done and how he could stick on the straight and narrow from then on. He’d heard about a lot of guys who fooled around on the road, but Roberto had never been one of them, as far as Alex knew, the other man had always been the perfect image of a husband and father. Maybe he would be a great voice to have in his ear after all of this was over to keep him from ever giving into temptation ever again.

Although he imagined that even thinking about what it had been like to go through all of this— the fear of getting caught and the crushing guilt of actually doing it, those things would probably be enough on their own to keep him from doing it again, he hoped. He imagined that Ryan would always be there for him as a confidante about it, too, a voice of reason if he was ever tempted again, though he was thinking he would do whatever it took to keep himself from getting into the situation again.

But could he ever really have too many voices helping him? Not that he would be the one to tell Roberto what was going on, but maybe if the other man figured it out on his own—that would be a whole different story. Maybe.

“You still with me, Burr?”

Alex blinked a little at Roberto and nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’m sitting right here, aren’t I?”

Roberto rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. You know what I mean. And they say that goalies are the weird ones. I’ve got nothing on you right now, honestly.”

The rest of their ride was silent, and the team seemed mostly in the mood to doze for the plane ride home, a few guys snacking or watching movies on their tablets and laptops, but the plane was mostly quiet but for the muffled sound of voices that came from a few guys who had their headphones up a little too loud and the occasional snore from a guy or two who would swear up and down when they woke up that of course they didn’t snore.

Alex didn’t mind so much. Those noises were all a reminder to him that he was a part of this team. It was something that he enjoyed. 

By the time the plane landed he was feeling a little more nervous. He had to go home, had to go back to his wife, and things had changed. At some point during the road trip he’d become comfortable with the whole arrangement with Ryan and that had changed the whole outlook of the thing between them. He knew it as much as he could feel it. It meant that he was anxious about seeing his wife and his girls. He felt like he’d betrayed them twice as much by being _happy_ with Ryan. He’d almost forgotten how wrong what he’d been doing was. He’d thrown a part of himself into it almost thoughtlessly. 

The look that Ryan shot him as they stood beside each other on their way to their cars spoke volumes. He felt the same. They’d both made the same mistake in getting too comfortable in each other’s company. Alex had to look forward to their next road trip because this thing between them just got more dangerous the more they let themselves settle into it. Ryan wasn’t his boyfriend. He wasn’t even his lover. He was just his dirty little secret.

“I’ll see you tomorrow for practice?” Ryan said, his voice lifting up just a little hopefully, and Alex hated himself, absolutely despised the part of him that wished he was going home with the other man. He was disgusted with this person he was becoming.

“Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t miss it. Coach would eat me alive. Especially since we have the Penguins in here on Tuesday.”

Ryan nodded and took a half a step towards Alex. It took all Alex had to take a half a step back, shaking his head. “I’ve gotta go. I think Nancy is waiting up for me.” Yes, thinking about his wife was the only thing helping him in this situation. He had to think about her or he was going to do something monumentally stupid like let Ryan kiss him in the middle of the airport parking lot.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I think Andrea—I’ve gotta go, too. See you tomorrow.”

Alex swallowed hard and turned his back on Ryan, forcing one foot in front of the other until he made it to his car and unlocked the door, sliding inside and gripping the steering wheel hard. He shouldn’t have had to convince himself that he needed to go home to his wife. He should have _wanted_ to go home to her and his girls more than anything. He remembered a time when that was all he wanted to do as soon as the plane had landed. That time had been fairly recent. This season, even. What had happened to that Alex? He needed to be that man again. Not this weak man who wanted to follow his teammate home and fall into bed with him. Especially not when that teammate had a wife waiting in his bed, too.

What was happening to him?

He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and gathered himself as best as he could before he pushed his key into the ignition and starting his car. He needed to go home. Maybe the problem was that he’d just been around Ryan too much. Maybe he just needed to see Nancy and the girls again and all of those feelings for them would come flooding back.

Alex wanted to love his family more than anything and that was why he was doing all of this. That hadn’t changed, had it? He needed to leave all of those kisses and desperate touches in California where they belonged.

By the time he got home he could see the light in his bedroom was still on. So Nancy had waited for him, even though it was so late. Though he imagined that she was probably asleep on top of the covers with a book next to her and the light left on just like she had been so many times before when he’d been late to come home from road trips. He felt that spark of fond warmth that he’d been searching for back in the parking lot and was relieved at it.

He quickly made his way into the house, quiet so as not to wake up his daughters as he tossed his keys into the bowl by the door and left his suitcase there, too, heading up the stairs until he came to his bedroom door. Nancy was, in fact, spread out on her side of the bed her hair covering her face as she slept soundly. He almost didn’t want to wake her, but it didn’t look that comfortable, she must have been a little bit cold-- it was a little chilly in the room. He imagined it would be more comfortable under the blankets. At least she’d already changed into her pajamas. He quickly stripped down himself, turned off the light and went to shake her awake. She was drowsy, but smiled at him in the darkness of the room.

“Welcome home,” she whispered, leaning in to kiss him softly. It missed the heat that Ryan’s kisses had spread through him, but something settled in his chest at her touch and she slid under the covers with him and curled up against him. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he replied after a slight pause, the lie leaving a heavy feeling in his heart as he threaded his fingers through her hair. Now that he was with her again he was able to calm himself of some of the feelings that had been out of control when he was around Ryan, but there was no denying that his feelings for Ryan and his feelings for his wife were so very different.

“Love you,” she murmured against his skin where her face was pressed against his chest, and he swallowed hard. 

“I love you, too.”

That, at least, was no lie. Whether or not he felt the same thing for his wife and for Ryan, he did love her. It was probably good that the feelings that he had for the both of them were different. The feelings that he had for his wife were meant to last for the rest of his life, and the feelings that he had for Ryan were meant to last just for a single breath. Or something like that.

Finding sleep was a little easier that night despite his conflicting thoughts, though he assumed that it was just because he had the comforting warmth of his wife in his arms again. He’d always slept easier with her in his arms.

The following morning, he stepped into the kitchen to see his wife and daughters already enjoying breakfast and seeing the three of them together in such an obviously domestic sight reminded him that that was what he was fighting to keep. 

Victoria was reaching out and calling for him and he reached to scoop her into his arms, hugging her tightly against him. He felt unworthy of her unquestioning love, but couldn’t help but to press his cheek against hers anyways, his chest aching at her laughter. What had he done to earn this much love from his family? Betray them and fall in love with another man?

He was going to make it right. He was going to get every ounce of these feelings for Ryan out of his system on their next road trip if it was the very last thing he did. He couldn’t let anything else distract himself from his family. They deserved to have all of his attention and right now they were still sharing it with Ryan who had carved out his own little space in Alex’s mind and heart.

“Are you coming home right after practice?” Nancy was asking him, taking Victoria from him as the toddler released her hold from around his neck a little reluctantly. 

“Yeah, I’ll come right home. I don’t think there are any meetings, but I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Nancy nodded and leaned in to press her lips against his in a soft, chaste kiss before pulling away to deposit their oldest daughter back in her seat. 

“Maybe next practice you bring Victoria and she can skate with you? Or we can take them to the park—or we can just do something as a family. You haven’t had a chance to spend much time with the girls in a while.”

Alex smiled and nodded. “Maybe we can do that. We’ll see how the team’s doing.”

Nancy nodded and brushed her hair away from her face. “All right, well you’d better get going. I’m sure you don’t want to be late.”

He shook his head at that and headed out the door. Coach wasn’t a huge fan of lateness to say the least.

He was as anxious about seeing Ryan again as he had been about seeing Nancy the night before. He didn’t know how he would feel about seeing him after realizing just how much the whole arrangement that the two of them was affecting his life with his family. 

Alex stepped into the lounge and saw a few of the guys sprawled around snacking on fruit and dry cereal or drinking their coffees. He hadn’t spotted Ryan yet, though, and was a little relieved for that until he changed and headed into the locker room and spotted Ryan already sitting alone in the room at his stall.

Swallowing hard, he tried to ignore the way his heart suddenly started thumping in his chest like it was trying to escape from its cage.

Ryan smiled when he caught his gaze and something tightened in his chest as he returned the smile easily. That sure, confident feeling he’d had after waking up with his wife and seeing his girls—that was all gone in the moment that Ryan’s eyes locked with his.

They couldn’t keep on like this.

“Morning, Burr,” Roberto chirped, bumping into him from behind. Alex caught himself before he did anything horrendously embarrassing like fall forward or on his ass. He was a hockey player. He was supposed to have great reflexes and balance.

“Yes, yes, good morning to you too, Lu. Don’t worry, nobody forgot that you existed today.”

Roberto slid into his stall and began organizing his pads, fingers sliding over them in the same rhythm they did before every on-ice practice. Goalies were truly the weirdest of all.

It was time that Alex stopped focusing his attention of Ryan, especially in Roberto’s presence. Especially when he was so utterly confused by the feelings storming just under the surface of his consciousness. How was it possible that he could have loved his wife and adored his children not an hour ago and yet have his heart caught in his throat and his fingers aching to reach out to touch Ryan so badly? How could he love two people so differently but so damn much?

He couldn’t wait a week to fix these feelings he had for Ryan. He couldn’t wait a week suffering the fracture of attention between two people who probably, most definitely deserved better than he was giving them. Than he was capable of giving them right now.

They would have to work something out sooner. He didn’t know how, but there had to be something that they could do, because pretty soon he was sure that he was going to lose his mind.

“You doing your best pylon impression, Burr? I thought you saved that for game time?” Ryan called out to him, his grin a little lopsided.

Alex felt that same annoying pulse of attraction before he threw the middle finger up at Ryan. “Fuck off, Kes, I’m not you. You’re just jealous that you didn’t wake up looking this good.”

Ryan laughed at that, though the look he gave Alex was hot with intent. He felt hot arousal rush through him in response to it against his own will.

“Oh please, I wake up looking like this every morning. It’s a burden to wake up having a good day, I know.”

Alex sighed and tore his gaze from Ryan’s, a small grin playing on his lips until he caught sight of Roberto watching them. There was something knowing there now. 

Well shit.

He hadn’t realized that they’d basically been flirting in front of the one guy who had been keeping his eye on them.

“I always wake up looking good,” Roberto chimed in. “In case either of you were wondering. Thanks for asking, by the way.”

“Oh please,” Ryan said smoothly, tearing his gaze from Alex finally. “We could wring out your pillowcases and solve the oil crisis.”

“Fuck you!” Roberto chirped back, stretching himself out a little.

Alex just let the sound of them bickering settle over him and tried to feel that familiar sense of comfortable companionship again as he slid into his stall between them. It felt a little like grasping for straws that just weren’t there. He was too mixed up, and now doubly worried about Roberto. Though he’d already decided that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the other man found out about them on his own. He’d always just kind of assumed that it would be after everything was over and they’d settled back into getting back into their usual rhythm. 

It all just added up to one thing: He and Ryan couldn’t wait a week until their road trip to finish this thing between them.

Practice was short, their usual on-ice skate followed by a short cool off in the gym and the first chance that Alex got he pulled an unsuspecting Ryan into an empty room, closing the door behind them with a soft, decisive click.

“We need to talk,” he said hurriedly, trying not to let his fingers linger too long on Ryan’s chest. It would have been all-too easy to just let himself give in now.

“About what? I thought you wanted to keep a low profile? I gotta say, this isn’t really going to help that. Guys are going to notice if we don’t get out there by the time everyone’s leaving. Especially if someone comes to use this room. But if you really want to fool around, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Alex flushed but refused to look away. Surely Ryan knew what he was feeling. He’d gone home to his wife and kids last night, too, and then he’d been stuck back with Alex again. Surely that had affected him. Alex couldn’t be the only one feeling like this. He hoped not, anyways. It would have made him feel even more alone.

“I can’t do this,” Alex said a little desperately. Ryan paled a little, and opened his mouth to speak. Alex realized how it must have sounded and rushed to correct himself. “No, I mean--- I can’t wait. I thought it would have been for the best to wait, but it’s not. I think it’s better if we don’t wait at all anymore.”

Ryan let out a quick puff of air, running his fingers through his hair. “Oh , for—Jesus, Burr, I thought you were going to say—I thought it was going to be something else.”

Alex knew what Ryan was worried he was going to say, and his response to it should have been another hint to them that they were doing something wrong, that they should have stopped thins thing right them before they got any further into it and couldn’t actually stop themselves. That they were doing this thing the wrong way.

He shoved those thoughts aside, though, and just shook his head. “No, I just meant that we should, uh, fast forward this thing. I can’t take being confused between you and my family for another week before we leave for California again. We have to do something sooner than that.”

Ryan had a look on his face like he couldn’t have agreed more. Or like he’d just opened up a Christmas present early. He leaned in, bracketing Alex against the door and kissing the breath out of him in one smooth movement. Alex didn’t even bother fighting him. At this point he knew it would be useless, he wanted this so badly, what was it going to hurt to have one more kiss in the mix?

Nancy would never know. He’d never tell her. This was going to work.

After a second or two, Alex pulled away from the kiss, drawing in a deep breath. “We can’t do it here, you know. Or right now. That’s not really what I meant.”

Ryan laughed a little, the sound sweet in Alex’s ears. “Sorry, I guess I got a little over excited.”

Alex couldn’t help but to return the grin even though that mix of feelings was back with that momentary lapse and thought of his wife. He had to work to push her to the back of his mind. There would be plenty of time to think of her later. His wedding ring already felt heavier on his finger and he did his best to think about just Ryan instead. It had been all too easy earlier. When he hadn’t wanted to think of Ryan. Why did his mind like to play these tricks on him? There was some level of pride that came with making Ryan lose all coherent thought with just a kiss or just the promise of more. Ryan who could have anyone he wanted—Ryan who already did have a beautiful wife waiting for him at home, but who still wanted for Alex.

“So what do you think we should do?”

Alex licked his lips and shrugged a little, pushing Ryan just a little further away from him so that neither of them got the idea that they needed to fool around anymore in this room. Having even that much privacy made something like that too tempting, but who knew how long they’d have their privacy for, and Alex was still very much confused about everything that was going on. 

“We play the Pens tomorrow, but maybe after the game—if we can find a way to get away from our wives for a while and get to a hotel or something?”

It was Ryan’s turn to lick his lips and his eyes were on Alex’s mouth. Alex shifted a little uncomfortably under the scrutiny. He’d never quite get used to it. Even his wife didn’t usually look at him with such intense desire. Not to say that she didn’t want him. He knew that she did. When they were together, when they made love, she was always wet and hot and welcoming under his touch. He had no doubt that she desired him.

There was just something different and hungrier in the way that Ryan desired him, and it made him itchy and hot with want to see what could come from it.

That was why they were doing this thing, wasn’t it? So that he wouldn’t have those thoughts anymore. There wouldn’t be any more wondering what was behind those heated gazes, because he would have already known. Maybe then, with the mystery gone, he could move on with loving his wife and living his life.

“Tell your wife you’re going out for drinks with the team and I’ll tell mine the same. That should give us a few hours at least.”

Alex almost wanted to ask if that would be enough time. A part of him wanted to go to sleep and wake up curled around Ryan, but he knew that giving this thing any semblance of normalcy would just make it worse. It would also have been a bigger betrayal to his wife if he were to give away something like that which was always meant to belong just to her when he was already giving up this big piece of himself to Ryan. He had to save whatever he could for her.

“All right. Okay. I can do that.”

It would mean lying to Nancy again, but he was already doing that so much, what was one more lie in the long run?

“Okay, we should… probably go.”

Alex nodded in agreement, but because he was already giving into the weakness that was Ryan, reached forward to grab him by his shirt and pulled him in so that he could take one last, rough kiss from him. Because he’d managed to surprise the other man, it was mostly a clash of teeth before it was a yielding mouth and the slide of warm tongues against each other, but it was still a great kiss nonetheless. He felt a pleasant hum of warmth through him by the time it was over and pushed Ryan back from him with what he was sure was a silly grin that matched the one on Ryan’s face. They had a minute before they had to sink back into reality and go back to living their lives for the night and living with their families and everything would be a hundred and ten percent more confusing than it had been when he’d walked through the doors of the arena this morning.

“I’ll be thinking of you,” Ryan said softly, licking his lips.

Alex frowned a little at that and shook his head. “No. Don’t do that. Try to only think about me when we’re together. Think about your—think about Andrea when you’re with her. You owe her that much.”

Ryan breathed out heavily and nodded. “Okay, I know that. I just meant that I’m always thinking about you a little bit. It’ll be hard not to, knowing what we’ll be doing after the game tomorrow.”

That much Alex could understand at least and he nodded. “All right. Just… try to be with your family tonight. Tomorrow will be for us.”

Nodding, Ryan straightened out his shirt a little. “Okay. You going to let me out of here or not? You’re blocking the door, you know.”

Flushing a little, Alex stepped away from the door pulling it open. “Yeah. See you for pre-game tomorrow.”

Ryan nodded, throwing one last look over his shoulder before heading down the corridor and out of sight. Alex wondered how he was going to manage putting that man out of his thoughts for the rest of the night and take his own advice to pay attention to his family.

He gave himself a moment to collect himself before he headed out to his car and drove himself home. 

Nancy was waiting for him in the kitchen by the time he got himself through the front door and he could hear Victoria playing in the living room and could actually see Lexie in her playpen just outside of the kitchen. He leaned in and kissed Nancy on the cheek softly. There was something about knowing that he was resolving this thing with Ryan that settled a little of his confusing thoughts and made it easier to be in her presence even after having just been with Ryan. He still felt that gnawing of guilt, ever present in the pit of his stomach when he found himself at home. He guessed that it would be a while before that feeling went away with what he was doing.

“Good practice?”

Alex nodded a little noncommittally. He was never big into talking about his practices after them. Most of what coach said to them couldn’t be repeated in the presence of a toddler Victoria’s age, anyways. Not when she was in the stage where she mostly just repeated the things she heard. 

“It was good—listen, I’m probably going to go out for drinks with the guys after the game tomorrow, all right? I’ll be home late so you don’t have to wait up for me.”

Nancy’s brows drew together a little as she frowned slightly. “Really? But you’ve only been home for a day. You’ve barely spent any time with the girls. Or with me.”

“Well the game would run late, anyways. It’s not like we’d get the chance to spend much time together. The girls would be asleep by the time it was over and I’d be too tired to spend any quality time with you, you know that.”

“But not too tired to spend time with the guys?”

Alex huffed out a slightly annoyed breath and tried to remember that he had no business being annoyed with her at all, he was keeping her in the dark about so many things, and the biggest of which was the thing he was lying to her about right now. 

“You know how it is. It’s a team building thing. Tomorrow is a big game for us. The Pens are a great team. Crosby’s in town, the arena will be loud. It’s my first game back here since I got hurt, too. The guys want to celebrate. I’ll be back home for the day after and then there’s only one more game before we head out for our road trip. You’ll practically have me all to yourself. We’ll do something with the girls, I promise.”

And hopefully he would be entirely theirs. No more thoughts of Ryan. All of his thoughts and all of his love, all of those things that should have been hers all along would be hers again.

“I guess it’s all right. It doesn’t sound like there’s any changing your mind. Just try not to be out too late. We want to spend some time with you on Wednesday without you being too hung over.”

Alex nodded and leaned in to kiss her again, this time on the mouth. “I promise not to drink too much.”

He hoped that he wouldn’t need to drink too much to get his courage for his night with Ryan. He hoped that it would come naturally enough that they would be able to just do it and get it over with. Even if there was a tiny part of him, the quietest part of him, that was sad that he was going to be ending this thing so much sooner than he’d been prepared to.

“Thank you, love.”

She just patted his chest and turned back towards the stove and he headed over to where his girls were playing to see if he could join in and spend what little quality time there was left in their day with them. He really should take his own advice and just be a great father tonight. Tomorrow things were going to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just saying, if there were a soundtrack to this fic-- well, the later chapters were all written while I was listening to 'It Ends Tonight' by the All-American Rejects. It was basically my own personal soundtrack for this fic. It's a great song!


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sex finally happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this fic was the longest I ever went into a fic before sex finally happened and as a result of that... this is the longest smut scene I've ever written and it's definitely the most graphic, too. So I feel weirdly self-conscious about it. Anyways, i'm glad they finally got to fuck!

The game against Pittsburgh had just as much excitement in it as the one earlier on in the year had had. Alex was just glad that he’d been able to play this time. The sound of the crowd cheering had his blood roaring in his ears and he’d known since the beginning of the game that regardless of the outcome of it, it was going to be a good one. Of course if they’d managed to pull out a win it would be all the sweeter.

He hadn’t even thought about Ryan once during the game, but as soon as it was over, his gaze kept sliding over to the other man next to him. Even when the media flagged him down for their sound bites, and he’d had to focus on maintaining comprehensible English for the little interviews. He followed Ryan into the gym after he was finished with the media for the cool down period, and his gaze never once left Ryan as he pedalled on the bike and Alex stretched out with Chris. He was going to have sex with Ryan tonight.

“Hey, Burr.”

He almost jumped off his seat when he heard the voice next to him. He turned his head and just like he’d dreaded it was Roberto climbing onto the bike next to him and leaning in close so that he could keep his voice down.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

Roberto narrowed his eyes a little bit. “I think you know what’s up. What are you planning to do? I hope you know how obvious you’re being.”

He flushed darkly and glanced away from Roberto, looking just about anywhere else. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know what you think you’re hiding from me, from the rest of the team, but anyone with eyes can tell that there’s something going on with you and Kes. I don’t know if any of the other guys have actually noticed it yet, but if you keep on the way you are, they’re going to.”

Alex turned his head back to face Roberto. “I don’t know what you think you know, but nothing’s happened.”

A snort escaped Roberto at that and he pedaled a little harder in response to it. 

“I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, me or yourself,” Roberto said softly. “I don’t think you’re fooling either of us, to be honest with you.”

Alex frowned. “I’m not—“

“Look,” Roberto began. “It’s none of my business, you’re grown men, but you’re both married and you’re both men and this is the NHL. You represent this team and all of the rest of us, so whatever you’re doing, try to do it quieter all right? It’s not my place to tell you that you shouldn’t do it, but you know that this franchise doesn’t need anything else to make it look bad. We’ve had enough bad press to last us the rest of our careers.”

His whole face felt hot and he looked away from Roberto again. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting but he was pretty sure it wasn’t that. It wasn’t acceptance and it wasn’t flat out disgust at what they were doing. It was probably better than he deserved, given the circumstances.

“It’s not going to happen past today,” he finally admitted as quietly as he thought he could while still making sure that the other man could hear him. “We’re ending it tonight.”

Roberto nodded a little. “It’s not my business, like I said before, but it’s probably for the best. For all the reasons I already said. I’ve seen the way you look at him. It seems dangerous.”

Alex nodded and finally looked at Roberto again. “It is. That’s why we’re ending it before anything can really happen. Don’t tell anyone—please.”

Roberto just shook his head. “Are you crazy? I’m the one telling you to keep this on the down low as much as possible. I’m not going to go around spreading it. You know how things spread in the NHL. One person finds out and it gets to every team and sooner than you know it, it’s being used as chirping material.”

Alex flinched a little at the thought of someone chirping him over this thing with Ryan. He couldn’t stand the idea of his colleagues knowing that he was the kind of guy that cheated on his wife, he didn’t want them to think of him as someone who also fooled around with other guys, too.

“Thanks. I’m sorry to get you involved in all of this.”

A grin spread over Roberto’s face and he shrugged one shoulder. “Are you kidding? Figuring out you stupid kids is the most interesting thing I’ve had to do all season.”

Alex returned the grin a little shakily. It was good to know that they’d entertained Roberto at least. He guessed. At least they could trust him not to break their confidence.

“Just be smart about this thing, Burr.”

Alex nodded. That was what he was trying to do.

The guys were gathered around the food table post game, and Alex was pressed between Roberto and Ryan and trying to keep himself from shaking too much in his nervousness. Pretty soon he and Ryan were going to go off and be alone and all of those times that their kisses had been cut short by Kevin and by circumstance—all that was going to mean nothing because it wasn’t going to happen like that tonight. Tonight they were going to seal the deal. Finish the thing. He still didn’t know what exactly they were going to do, but he knew it was going to involve both of them being naked, and he was going to get to actually see Ryan’s naked cock up close.

He’d never seen a hard cock up close before, but he was glad that the first one he was going to see was Ryan. The only one he was ever going to see. He wasn’t planning on ever doing this with anyone else ever again.

“Hey, you guys want to go out for a drink?” Kevin was calling over through the crowd. A couple of the guys were agreeing with him, and Alex was marveling at the irony of the fact that they’d used that as an excuse for their wives and now they were going to have to come up with an excuse for their team.

“Sorry, wife is waiting up for me tonight,” Ryan lied and it seemed so easy. 

“Mine too,” he chimed in.

“Oh, looks like we’ve got a couple of guys getting lucky tonight,” Kevin laughed at them, and Alex flushed deeply. “Oh look at you, Burr. So shy all of a sudden?”

Alex just flipped him off and grabbed for his jacket. “See you guys on Thursday.” He caught Roberto’s knowing gaze and flushed impossibly darker before heading out. He heard Ryan call the same thing behind him and they walked in silence towards their cars.

“Here, I picked up the keys earlier. It’s not the nicest hotel but nobody will ask questions.”

Alex took the key from Ryan and nodded, swallowing past the lump in his throat. They were going to do this, and they could be going just about anywhere and he’d agree to it. There was just a hum of excitement under his skin for it. 

“Okay, I’ll follow behind you.”

Ryan nodded and leaned forward like he was going to kiss him. Alex remembered what Roberto had said, and just took a half a step back. “Wait for the hotel.”

Ryan nodded and they separated into their own cars.

He didn’t listen to music or anything on the way, focused intently on following Ryan instead. He didn’t want to get lost or anything, and he didn’t think that he could focus on trying to understand music anyways. He was too keyed up. They’d done all of their lying, and now this was really going to happen. He could hardly believe it.

Really, Alex couldn’t remember having been this excited for sex in his entire life. Not even for his first time. It was an incredible feeling, and he felt a little like a teenager again.

He apologized to his wife in his mind a hundred times over and over again. It didn’t mean that he was more attracted to Ryan than her just because he was more excited to have sex with him. It was just because Ryan was new and—or something. There was something like that to it. There had to be. 

Before he’d even really realized it, they were pulling into a parking lot, and he was parking his car and wiping sweaty palms off of his dress pants a little anxiously. This was really happening. He fought off the urge to loosen his tie so that he could breathe a little easier.

He pushed open his door after waiting what he thought was a fair amount of time for Ryan to get out of his car and get into the hotel, and grabbed for a hat from his back seat, pulling it over his head just in case someone might recognize him. He imagined that Ryan had probably done the same thing.

It didn’t really seem to matter that much, since nobody in the lobby paid him much attention as he made his way through and went to the door number written on the key, sliding it through the lock until it flashed from red to green and he was able to push the door open.

Ryan was already sitting on the bed, thankfully still clothed (he didn’t know what he would do if his friend had decided to get undressed without him), with his face resting in his hands and elbows resting on his knees.

“There you are. I was starting to wonder if you’d changed your mind.”

Alex shook his head, finally loosening his tie and tugging it off to toss it on the desk. “No. Moving this thing up was my idea, remember?”

Now that they were alone together and nobody was around to interrupt them, it seemed so much more real and Alex felt a whole lot less confident about what was about to happen. How had that happened?

“Of course. I guess I just let my mind get away from me. Have you done this before?”

He raised a brow at Ryan, his fingers twitching at his side. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to start getting undressed or wait for some sign from Ryan first. “Do I look like someone who’s done this before?”

Ryan shook his head and licked his lips. “Come here.”

Finally something that he could do. He stepped forward until he was standing in front of the still sitting Ryan. 

“Lower your head a little.”

He did.

Ryan grabbed him gently by the back of his head and brought their faces together so that they could kiss. It was an easy kiss, the slide of open mouths and tongues and the feel of Ryan’s blunt fingernails scraping against the back of his neck where the skin was the most sensitive. He shivered into the kiss. This was familiar, at least. It wasn’t like he was a virgin. He’d slept with his wife on a regular basis (and he was begging his mind not to think of her too much now when he was so close to finishing this thing) and he’d been with women before he’d met her, even if it hadn’t been that many. He’d just never been with another man before, and he’d certainly never been with Ryan Kesler before.  
“Calm down,” Ryan was breathing into his mouth, his fingers coming down to slowly unbutton the buttons of his shirt, pushing it off of his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor as soon as he was done with it, and Alex lifted shaking fingers to do the same, pushing Ryan’s shirt off of his own shoulders and tossing it behind him to join his own.

Right about now he was wishing that he’d had some liquid courage to help him out. But to be honest, he didn’t want anything that might sully this experience for him or for Ryan. He wanted to remember this experience. If for nothing else, then for the experience of remembering why he couldn’t do it again. Who knew, maybe it would be so awkward that he wouldn’t even want to do it again.

Ryan’s fingers were sliding down his chest and pinching lightly at his nipples, making him gasp, and he thought—this was probably not going to be the awkward kind of sex that he thought it might be.

He tilted his head to the side a little so that he could watch the tanned hands slide down his pale chest and admire how they looked moving against his skin. Ryan’s hands were so big—they didn’t look anything like the small, delicate hands of his wife. Not that he was going to think of her right now when he was focused on thinking about Ryan. Ryan who was leaning his head down to drag his lips against the curve of Alex’s jaw. He sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have beard burn tomorrow. Or, well, he sort of wished that he would have it, if only to remember this by, but he didn’t know how he might explain it away.

“A-ah… I like that,” he breathed out when Ryan’s teeth tugged lightly on the sensitive skin of his throat, careful not to mark him. He felt the other man’s lips curve into a grin against the skin. 

“I’ll bet you do,” he murmured. “But I can’t do it too much or it’ll leave a mark.”

Alex almost didn’t care. He wondered how much he could pass off as the normal wears and tears of hockey play. Nancy knew that he got bruised up playing hockey, would she really be able to tell the difference between a mark made by a high flying puck and Ryan’s mouth? He doubted it. He shouldn’t take the chance, but—

“Do it. I’ve got an excuse. Just do it again. And a little bit harder. I liked it.”

Ryan shook his head laughing a little breathily as he reached down to palm lightly at what Alex could tell was the light outline of his cock through his game day dress pants. Fuck. He’d already had that much of an impact on him? He hadn’t even really touched him.

Ryan took Alex’s words to heart, though, and was sucking at that spot on his neck again, dragging his teeth against it and sucking at it a little harder. Alex pushed his hips up looking for any kind of friction that he could get as heat rushed through him from that point. It felt so good. It was a sting of pain, and there was the knowing that it was so wrong to let Ryan mark him up at all, but it was so _good_.

“Fuck, Kes…”

Ryan was grinning against his skin again, his hands coming up to grab at his ass, squeezing the firm skin hard and even through his pants it was hot. He wanted to know what it would feel like if he were naked. He wanted Ryan to be naked, too. Suddenly the pants and underwear and socks and shoes and _rings_ that they had on between them seemed like way too much.

He pulled away reluctantly and stared down at the other man, sure that his chest all the way up to the tips of his ears was flushed.

“Don’t you want me to touch you?”

Ryan quirked a brow at him, reaching up to pinch at Alex’s nipple again and the sting of it made his dick twitch a little.

“Of course I do. I thought you seemed a little wound up, it seemed like you could do with a little loosening.”

Alex swallowed hard and lifted a hand to where his throat was still throbbing hotly a little from where Ryan had been sucked and biting at him and he wondered how vivid the bruise would be. Would it be as vivid as the bruises they got from when they were hit by a puck? Or would it be brighter? Would it be in the exact shape as Ryan’s mouth?

“I feel loosened up.”

Ryan was grinning, his eyes shining brightly in the artificial light of the room. “Yeah, I can see that. Why don’t we kick our shoes off? I feel over dressed all of a sudden.”

Alex was a little relieved that they were actually going to be taking a step forward with this whole thing. When they were just standing around talking, he felt awkward and nervous, but when they were actually doing stuff he felt confident and sure of what was happening. He kicked off his shoes and pulled his socks off. He didn’t think it would be the sexiest thing if he got naked and the only thing left on his body was his socks. 

Ryan left his own on though. Of course he did.

There was just the matter of his ring that was still heavy on his left hand and he reached to pull it off, placing it on the bedside table. “Do you mind?”

Ryan frowned a little before he realized what Alex was saying and moved to take his off as well, placing it beside Alex’s and they looked so strange and out of place sitting there beside each other, but Alex felt a hundred times better without the weight of it on his hand. He turned back to Ryan.

The other man was already reaching forward to unbutton Alex’s pants and he was a little frozen in his place. He was going to have Ryan’s hand on his cock. Really on it . On his bare cock. For the first time ever. For the only time ever. It was hard to comprehend. His breath caught in his throat and he stared down at the sitting man, watching him intently as he pulled the pants and boxers down his legs and Alex kicked them aside so that he was standing there entirely naked under Ryan’s intent gaze.

Something about that made him want to cross his arms over his chest or protect himself somehow. He’d never been particularly shy, but the way that Ryan was _looking_ at him, well, that was enough to make him want to hide a little bit. He looked hungry, and Alex swallowed hard.

“Are you just going to stare all night, or are you going to do something about the fact that I’m standing here naked in front of you?”

He sounded a whole lot more confident than he felt, at least to his own ears. 

Ryan smirked up at him, shaking his head. “I’m going to take my time with you. You’d better get used to it.”

It was hard to imagine Ryan taking his time with him when his cock was basically at Ryan’s face level. He could tilt his hips forward and have his cock pressed at the other man’s lips in a half a second. Not that he was going to do that. That would have been rude. But he could have, and that was all that really mattered.

“Kes—“ 

“You can call me by my name here, we’re alone now,” Ryan drawled, lifting his fingers to drag just the tips of them against the hardness of Alex’s cock, his hips arching just slightly into the touch.

“Ryan, fuck, Ryan.”

Ryan’s smirk widened a little and he nodded, repeating the motion before he wrapped his fingers loosely round Alex’s cock and jerking him slowly a couple of times. “That’s right, now you know how to ask nicely for whatever you want.”

Alex tried to scowl down at the other man, but it was hard to scowl at someone who was jerking you off.

“You like this?”

Alex did manage to roll his eyes a little, moving his hips into the loose circle of Ryan’s fingers. “Obviously. Have you ever done this before?”

Ryan shrugged a little, looking up at Alex and looking entirely too hot for his own good. “A few times in college. It was no big deal.”

Alex thought that it was actually kind of a huge deal and how did he not know that about his best friend? But really the only thing that mattered right now was that he was learning about it when it really mattered: when it was benefiting him. 

“That explains why you’re so good at this,” he said simply, licking his lips as he continued to watch.

Ryan’s fingers tightened their grip a little and he began pulling on Alex’s cock for real then, stroking him with sure strokes that definitely didn’t lack confidence.

“You think I’m good at this?”

Alex shuddered a little reaching down to brush his fingers through Ryan’s hair. “Oh, please. You know you’re good at this. You always know.”

Ryan nodded and leaned in, pressing his lips to the tip of Alex’s cock in a strangely chaste movement, given what they were doing. 

He couldn’t hold back the sharp inhalation of breath at the feel of those lips against his cock. 

“If you think I’m good at jerking you off, just wait until you feel my mouth around your dick,” Ryan said, still smirking widely. Alex rather thought the smirk suited him, even if it was a little unnerving to see it so close to his cock.

“If you’re not all talk, you’ll just do it,” he retorted, pushing his hips so that the tip of his cock finally did brush against Ryan’s lips again.

“Pushy,” Ryan murmured, opening his mouth to take the head of Alex’s cock in, sucking lightly on the tip, his hand still jerking the rest of it slowly but rhythmically. He’d definitely done this before. Nobody could pull off that kind of coordination if they hadn’t done it before.

It took everything he had to keep his eyes open and focused on Ryan. The other man looked really fucking good with his lips stretched over Alex’s cock. He didn’t get chirped the way Alex himself had chirped the likes of Sidney Crosby or Taylor Hall for having the lips that seemed perfect for this sort of thing, but he definitely seemed to have them nonetheless. 

Ryan was sliding his tongue against the slit at the head of his cock, and he must have been tasting the precome that was leaking from Alex there, and the sensation of it had Alex bucking his hips in an uncontrolled motion. Something he hadn’t done during a blowjob in a very long time. He usually prided himself in having more control over himself than that. It was a special circumstance, obviously. Ryan sucked lightly at the tip, his free hand holding at Alex’s hips, holding him back from thrusting too far into his mouth. Alex wished he could have had more of that mouth, but Ryan was pulling off of his cock, sliding his tongue up and down the length of Alex’s cock and kissing the tip a little messily then.

“Ryan, Ryan, Ryan,” he breathed, tugging at his hair. “That feels so good, but what about you?”

He wasn’t so far gone that he had forgotten how badly he wanted to see all of Ryan, to feel his body against his own and he didn’t want all of this to be over with just a blowjob. Not after everything they’d done to get it to this point.

“What about me? You want to see me, too, Burr?” Ryan breathed, glancing up at Alex, and Alex could see that his eyes were wide and pupils were blown dark, so much darker than usual. It made him shiver a little. When he glanced lower, he could see that Ryan was still hard in his pants, too. The other man was clearly getting off on sucking him, too. That was hot. Usually his wife just did it for him as something that she knew he liked, not something that she enjoyed doing.

He wasn’t going to think about her, though. He was thinking about Ryan. Ryan whose fingers were coming down to flick open the button on his pants as he slid the zipper down and tugged them open, pushing them down his legs with his boxer briefs and kicking them aside so that he was dressed in just his socks.

Alex had been wrong. It was still hot.

By the time that Ryan was just sitting there naked with his cock pressed hard and curved up towards his belly, Alex could hardly form a coherent thought as to why they hadn’t done this before. Or as to why this was his first time being around a naked, aroused man.

He saw guys naked all the time at the rink, but this was really his first time being around one who was hard and clearly waiting for him to touch them. And his fingers were itching to get around Ryan’s cock, even though there was a little niggling of nervousness in his belly that he wouldn’t be as good at it as Ryan had been.

“Come on, then. Or are you just going to stare at me? I know I look good like this, but I’m waiting for you, Alex.”

His name sounded rough falling from Ryan’s lips and he moved quickly although it felt like he was sliding through syrup, climbing onto the bed so that they were finally on the same level, reaching out and wrapping his fingers around Ryan’s cock the same way he liked his own fingers wrapped around his own cock, and jacking him a few times.

The way Ryan’s mouth fell open a little and a truly stupid (and hot) expression fell across his face, Alex felt confident in that he was doing a good enough job. It made him feel better about the whole thing, and he began to stroke Ryan a little bit faster, twisting his wrist just a little and alternating between looking at Ryan’s face and turning his attention to the movement of his hand on the man’s cock. It was hard to pick between the visuals.

“Wait, Alex,” Ryan was saying all of a sudden, his hand coming out to grab hold of Alex’s wrist just as he was about to slide his thumb against the moisture that was quickly gathering at the tip of the head. He felt a little cheated. He wanted to taste it, too, just like Ryan had.

“I don’t want to come like this. Look, I want to try—have you given any thought to how this would end tonight?”

Alex had dreamt about it a few times but every time had been a little bit different. There had never been one true way that he’d imagined this thing between the two of them ending this thing, so he just shook his head.

“What if—I want to fuck you.”

Alex’s mouth hung open a little, and his grip on Ryan’s cock loosened as he stared up at the other man. Get fucked by the other man? Could he really do that?

“I think I could make it feel really good for you. I’ve done it before and obviously with—you know. I’ve done it a lot of times before. I’ll take my time and make it really good for you, I swear. I brought everything we’d need.”

He imagined Ryan going into a drugstore to pick up condoms and lube and tried not to grin a little at the mental image of that. He could just imagine it.

“I—“the truth was, he wanted Ryan to fuck him. He wanted to feel that ache in his backside for the rest of the night and wanted to know that he’d given the other man the most pleasure that he possibly could have. He wanted to be as close to Ryan as he could be, and there really was no closer he could be to him than that. He wanted it.

“Yes. I want that, too.”

Ryan grinned down at him and leaned in to kiss him soundly on the mouth before pushing him back on the bed. “I want to do it face to face. I know it might be easier the other way but I want to see you.”

That worked just fine for Alex. Even if it burned or stung a little, he could deal with that. He was a hockey player; he was used to a little bit of pain. It would be worth it to see Ryan’s face. 

“Okay,” he breathed, spreading his legs a little.

He felt extremely vulnerable like this. On his back with his legs spread open and ready for Ryan to do whatever he wanted with him. He wondered if this was what it felt like for his wife when she was ready for him to fuck her.

He wasn’t going to think about her, he reminded himself.

“Just let me get the stuff,” Ryan said, reaching over to the table and grabbing a plastic bag to grab a bottle of lube and a small box of condoms. He pulled off one of the condoms and placed it on the bed beside him and dropped the lube beside it.

“Okay, we’re ready. You ready?”

Alex had been ready for this for a long time, he thought. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Ryan smiled a little up at him from where he was kneeling between Alex’s legs and lowered his head to kiss the tip of his cock again and Alex savoured the feel of it, watching Ryan intently. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

Ryan slid his tongue down the length of his cock and carefully sucked one of his balls into his mouth and then the other, making Alex shift hotly under his touch, his fingers coming down to wrap around his own cock, stroking himself lightly.

“Yeah, that’s good. Touch yourself while I start this, okay?”

Alex nodded. He could do that. It sounded easy enough. “Yeah, okay.”

Ryan sucked his balls into his mouth one more time, his fingers sliding back lower to tease lightly around the rim of his hole, teasing at it lightly. He felt surprisingly sensitive, and he was about to open his mouth and remind the other man about the lube when Ryan’s tongue slid lower and teased along the rim of his hole just as his fingers had just done.

“Holy shit—“ he breathed, pressing down into the touch and squeezing his cock a little to stem the flood of sensation. It felt hot and wet and good. Great, even.

Again, he felt Ryan’s lips curve into a smirk against his skin, but this time it was against the skin of his ass which curbed the smugness of it, at least. Not everyone could say that. 

Slowly, Ryan’s tongue slid around his rim before pressing inside of him, and Alex could feel him using his fingers to hold his cheeks apart to give his tongue a little better access. He groaned loudly, something he might have been embarrassed about in any other circumstance.

He’d tried a couple of times to press his own fingers inside of himself and it had felt good enough, but he’d never had anything that had felt as good as this. He was silently glad for the fact that he’d just showered at the arena as he Ryan’s tongue slid inside of him, moving in slow thrusting movements, eating him out in a way similar to the way that he might have done to his wife.

No, he wasn’t going there.

He could feel Ryan pulling in gasps of breath through his nose and groaned a little at the loss when the other man finally pulled his mouth away and pressed the tip of one finger inside of Alex, pushing it into the first knuckle without too much resistance.

“How does it feel?”

Alex drew in a shaking breath, stroking himself slowly. His cock was hard and throbbing in his own hand and he could feel it leaking like it was proof enough without him even saying anything.

“Pretty good,” he managed to say, shifting a little, his legs still spread open.

“Pretty good?” Ryan asked him, his brows raised.

Alex flushed darkly, sure his whole body was red from it.

“Why do you even ask if you already know the answer?” he asked, still breathing hard as he watched Ryan reach for the lube, spreading it over his fingers.

“I like to hear it come from you.”

“It was amazing. Rocked my world. Feel better?”

Ryan grinned widely, pushing his finger back inside of Alex deeper and a little easier, thrusting it slowly inside of him. Alex breathed a little easier. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt good, actually. He’d known before that he liked having something inside of him sometimes, but he’d never known how to ask for it.

“I’ll feel better when I’m rocking your world with my cock,” Ryan said wiping his mouth a little and pulling his finger out so that he could press two fingers inside of Alex.

It was a little bit of a burn, then, but it was still good. Alex had done this many fingers on his own before. He’d done up to three. He knew he could take it. He pressed his hips back down against Ryan’s fingers, grinning back up at him.

“You’ve always been good at wagging your tongue around. Are you really as good with your dick?”

Ryan laughed a little and licked his swollen lips. “You’ll see.”

Ryan’s fingers were pressed inside of him and they felt so good, and he really found that he enjoyed the feeling of being full. He was anticipating the feeling of being truly full of the other man’s cock. That was something that would be unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

“How are you feeling?” Ryan asked him, fitting a third finger in alongside his other two, and Alex’s mouth was open as he pushed down against them. It felt so much like what he was craving, but just not quite enough.

“Like I want your dick in me. Are you going to keep fooling around or are you going to do it?”

Ryan shook his head a little, his fingers moving deep inside of Alex. “I don’t want to hurt you, next time—“he caught himself and they both looked away. There wouldn’t be a next time, so it would be better if they didn’t think about that.

“I don’t think it’s going to hurt too bad. I’ve had fingers in me before.”

Ryan cleared his throat a little. “Are we really going to talk about our wives right now?”

Alex frowned a little, squeezing his cock. “No, I meant—I did it to myself. When I was, uh, jerking off.”

Ryan looked a little placated by that and nodded. “Oh. Good.”

Alex didn’t know what to say that Ryan thought it was good that he hadn’t let his wife have him in the same way that Ryan was about to have him, but he tried not to think about that too much.

“I want you to fuck me,” he finally said, spreading his legs as wide as he could manage and tilting his hips up. “I’m ready for you already. Just get the condom on and do it.”

Ryan sighed a little at him, but there was a smile playing at the corners of his lips as he pulled his fingers out of Alex, wiping them on the corner of the blanket, reaching for the condom and tearing the package open before sliding the condom down over his cock.

“Okay, I’m going to do this now.”

Alex nodded, lifting his hand off of his cock and reaching up to grab Ryan’s shoulders as the other man positioned himself over him.

“Do it.”

Ryan was careful as he pushed inside of Alex, taking his time to slide inside inch by inch. Alex had thought that he’d been ready for it, but he was glad, now, that the other man was taking his time. It burned, stung, and was entirely uncomfortable. The only things that made it worth the discomfort were the look on Ryan’s face, his eyes wide as he stared down at Alex, and the feeling of fullness as Ryan was finally positioned fully inside of him, his balls pressed against his ass.

They were as close as it was possible to get. There was something special about that, and he pulled Ryan’s head down so that their mouths could meet in a slow, desperate kind of kiss as he adjusted to the feel of something so much bigger than a few fingers inside of him.

“You feel fucking great,” Ryan breathed into his mouth. “Better than anything I’ve ever felt.”

To be honest, Ryan was starting to feel pretty good, too. He was shifting his hips restlessly and his cock was moving a little inside of Alex and the more it did, the more Alex got used to the sensation of having it inside of him. Just the fact that it was Ryan was enough to have him looking past any discomfort that he might have been feeling. 

“You feel pretty good, too,” he said a little breathlessly. Ryan grinned down at him and brushed their noses together, shifting his hips again.

“I’m going to start moving again.”

Alex nodded and kept his legs spread open. “I’m ready for that.”

Something caught in Alex’s throat at the look Ryan was giving him when he started to move, careful little thrusts that were never too rough and that only rocked his body back a little with each movement. They felt a little better each time, and soon he was panting in time with Ryan who refused to look away from him.

“You know I love you, right?”

Alex’s breath caught in his throat that time and he just nodded. They were supposed to be trying not to think about stuff like that. This was supposed to be getting over that, but it was hard not to think about how much he loved the other man when they were pressed so close together. When Ryan was buried inside of him.

“I know. I love you, too,” he breathed, tilting his head so that he could kiss Ryan on the mouth even as he groaned when Ryan’s hand came to wrap around his cock, stroking him slowly.

He didn’t want to come, though. He didn’t want this thing between them to be over. He wasn’t ready for it to be over. He felt like it was just beginning right then as they were kissing and Ryan’s thrusts were getting a little more forceful. He should have known what a bad idea this was when they’d start it. He couldn’t begin to imagine how this was going to get Ryan out of his system. All he could think about was how much he wanted to be like this more often.

Ryan’s free hand came under him, grabbing his hips from underneath and tilting his hips up so that he could slide deeper inside of him, thrusting hard and fast, Alex sliding up with every movement. The room was filled with the sounds of their heavy breathing and the sounds of their bodies making constant contact with each other. It sounded dirty, and he catalogued it for later, too, wanting to keep every bit of this for later.

“Fuck, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last,” Ryan admitted against his lips still staring down into his face, and Alex almost wanted to look away because his expression was so open and he could tell in Ryan’s expression that he was afraid of this thing ending just the way that Alex was. So he just held onto his shoulders a little tighter, holding him as close as possible, wanting to feel every bit of him against him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m okay with it,” he murmured.

“In English, Burr. As hot as the French is, I have no idea what the fuck you’re saying to me,” but he didn’t look chastising. In fact he was smiling a little fondly down at Alex even as sweat was beading around his hairline and dripping into his face from the effort of fucking Alex.

“I said it’s okay—I’m okay if you come. I’m pretty close, too.”

Ryan nodded and Alex could see him swallow hard. Hell, he could practically feel it they were pressed so close together. “I won’t leave you hanging, I promise.”

Alex smiled up at him, licking his lips and not minding a bit that he caught Ryan’s in his or the fact that it made Ryan draw in a sharp breath and his hips stutter just a little bit. “I know you won’t. Just do it. I want to feel it.”

Ryan nodded and let go of Alex’s cock to grab his hips with both his hands, thrusting into him hard and quick, holding him in place as he did so.

Alex tilted his hips up to get more of that feeling, and something inside of him made him gasp every time that Ryan managed to thrust just _so_ inside of him, and he wanted to press down into that feeling, but this was about getting Ryan off right now. He’d explore that next time—no not next time, because there wouldn’t be a next time.

He’d just figure it out on his own, or get Ryan to put his fingers back inside of him when he was getting him off. Something like that.

He forced himself to pay attention to what was actually going on right in that moment and watched Ryan’s face as it contorted a little bit and his mouth hung open and his hands tightened where they were holding his hips (and he hoped that those wouldn’t leave bruises, they would be harder to explain away) and he shoved inside one hard, last time and Alex was sure he could feel the way that Ryan’ cock expanded just a little bit inside of him as he came into the condom.

There was a moment of silence where Ryan’s head was pressed against his shoulder and the other man spent a second catching his breath and shaking just a little and moving his hips just a bit like he was trying to wring out whatever was left of his orgasm before finally pulling out of Alex.

Alex immediately missed the fullness of it, and he flinched at how empty he felt once Ryan was gone from him.

“Ryan…” he murmured, reaching back out for him because he didn’t know what else to do.

Ryan shook his head, his hands moving out to rub small circles against Alex’s thigh.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want me to do?”

Alex shifted his hips and felt an immediate and sharp ache up his lower back and was kind of glad that they weren’t skating tomorrow. “I wish you were still fucking me, but—maybe your fingers? And your mouth. I want you to get me off. Please, I’m so hard.”

Ryan nodded, going along with Alex’s suggestion easily and sliding two fingers easily into him. It felt immediately better to have even just those two fingers inside of him and he let out a heavy breath that turned into a groan as Ryan’s other hand stroked up and down his cock and was joined a second later by his mouth sucking on the tip of it.

It really wasn’t going to take long to get him to come. He was already so close because of the sheer memory of Ryan’s face when he’d seen him come, from the memory of having the other man inside of him. From knowing that he’d been the one to get him to that point.

“Mm…” Ryan was humming around his length as he sucked him deeper into his mouth and pressed his fingers a little deeper inside, twisting them and pressing them just right _there_ , against that same place that had had him seeing stars before, and he cried out, his hands coming down to tangle in Ryan’s hair as his balls tightened and he came, his orgasm surprising him as it washed hotly over him and he hadn’t even had a moment to warn Ryan that it was going to happen.

As the other man pulled back, wiping his mouth, he didn’t look too much like he minded. He was still grinning that wide smart assed grin at Alex and Alex’s whole body felt heavy and well fucked and he grinned back at him. There would be time for the weight of what they’d done to wash over him, but right now he just wanted to bask in the afterglow with Ryan. He reached out for the other man, and Ryan came to him easily, curling up against him as they faced each other and Alex tucked his face against the curve of his neck, breathing heavily the scent of his sweat (so familiar after years of playing hockey with him) and the scent of their sex (new, but he thought he could get used to it—no, he wasn’t going to think about that), and the feel of Ryan’s arms coming around his waist comfortably.

“I love you,” Ryan was whispering to him again. “So much.”

Alex swallowed hard and closed his eyes.

“I know.”

He could feel Ryan frowning against the side of his face.

“You know? That’s all you’re going to say?”

Alex sighed and he didn’t want to let go of Ryan or pull away from him. He just wanted a few more minutes of basking in the afterglow with him, but it seemed like that wasn’t going to be possible. He didn’t want to unwrap himself from the other man. It felt too good to be pressed against him.

But like all good things, it had to come to an end. He pulled back a little and kissed Ryan on the mouth a slow, almost sad kiss that lasted a lot longer than he knew that it probably should have. Ryan seemed a little surprised by it, but kissed him back anyways.

“I love you,” Ryan repeated. “This didn’t change anything. I still—I still love you.”

Alex swallowed hard. This thing was meant to rid them of those feelings, to make this love between them wane.

“I can’t,” he said, pushing at Ryan’s chest a little until the other man was letting go of him and he could pull away from him. That ache in his lower back was a little more pronounced than he’d anticipated and he winced a little. Ryan noticed it and they were both flushing a little bit.

He liked it, though.

“Did it work for you?” Ryan asked him bluntly, standing there and looking absolutely ridiculous with the condom still hanging off his cock. Alex still found him ridiculously attractive, though he didn’t want to be having this conversation at all.

“Tell me the truth. You owe me that much at least. Don’t you think?”

Alex couldn’t look at Ryan. Couldn’t look at himself as his body throbbed to have Ryan inside of him again. His hole felt wide and spread and used and ready for more. He certainly still _wanted_ Ryan. But did he still love him? There was no real doubt that there was still an electrifying chemistry between the two of them, but he was sure as he’d been as sure as anything else in his life that he’d sincerely loved Ryan with every part of himself.

Was that love gone now that they’d finally done it?

No. There was an aching in his chest that matched the one in his ass, and he knew that he wanted more. That he wanted more of what they’d just done. But he couldn’t have it. He’d promised himself and in that he’d promised his wife. How could it have become this sort of disaster already?

“I can’t answer that, Ryan.”

Ryan looked a little relieved at that, if still a bit annoyed with him. “So you do still love me.”

Alex was sure that the guilt of that was written all over his face.

“Why can’t you just say it?”

Alex shook his head and reached for his boxers, tugging them on quickly. “You know why. This was about getting all of this out of our systems so that we could live with our wives properly. Not about loving each other more.”

Ryan huffed out a breath. “Well it obviously didn’t work. Are you saying that we should just give all this up? Didn’t you feel what I felt when I was fucking you?”

Alex’s fingers tightened on his pants as he separated them from Ryan’s. “Of course I did, but don’t you love your wife? Andrea? Don’t you remember that we were doing this for them, too. For our families. We can’t just forget about them because this thing grew between us. I know that you love being a father, can you tell me that you’ve been good at it ever since you’ve fallen in love with me? Because I’ve been a lousy one ever since I’ve been splitting my attention between you and my family. I need to be paying attention to the people that I owe it to and not to you. I do love you and this, uh, this was probably a horrible idea, but it’s too late to go back now. We’ll just have to accept that we can’t do it ever again and go back to our families like we were meant to. You got me in your system now get me out of your system. You _promised_.”

He was breathing hard by the end of it, his hands clenched tightly into fists at his sides, but Ryan was looking at him, his expression crushed. There was no doubt that this was having just as hard an effect on the other man as it was having on him.

“I love my wife and I love my kids more than I love anything else,” that stung, but it was the right answer, “but I don’t know how I’m supposed to pretend not to love you. I feel like we’re running around in one of those hamster wheels that we just can’t get out of. I did promise you and if that’s what you really want—I’ll keep my promise, but I still think that we could make something work between us.”

Alex shook his head even though all he really wanted to do was to crawl back into bed with Ryan and spend the night, pretend this place was their place and have everything be all right.

“I can’t cheat on my wife. This was—I promised that this would be the only time something like this happened and I can’t go against that. Even if I wanted to be with you, I took vows and she gave me two children and I owe it to her to make it work with her. I do love her and I love my girls. I have to make it work. I can’t be in love with two people.”

Ryan looked sad. “But you are.”

Alex shook his head again. “But I can’t be. I thought that getting you out of my system would be enough, but it’s going to take more than that. We’ll have to spend less time with each other on the road—try not to be alone with each other as much as possible. Try to, uh, actively keep this thing from ever happening again. Be responsible.”

Ryan sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “There’s no fighting you on this, is there?”

Alex just offered Ryan a sad smile as he pulled his pants on and reached for his shirt, tugging it on. It was wrinkled, but he’d just have to explain that away. Just like he’d have to explain so many things away. “No. Sorry. I have to do this to keep my family together.”

Ryan nodded and glanced away. “I guess I’ll see you, then? Or not? However this’ll work, I’ll follow your lead. If that’s what you want.”

Alex nodded and buttoned his shirt back up. He reached for his ring last, sliding it back onto his finger and feeling entirely unworthy of it after everything.

He stepped around the bed and up to Ryan, kissing him one last time on the mouth. Ryan returned the kiss and it was a lingering kiss that had no heat and was little more than a sad slide of mouths against each other as they just clung to each other, knowing that this was the last time that they were going to have the chance to really be together.

“I’ll love you for a long time after this,” Ryan whispered to him. “That’s why I’m willing to do this.”

Alex nodded, closing his eyes and kissing Ryan softly one more time. “I know. Thank you. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

He left Ryan there like that, standing naked except for his socks and the condom still hanging off his cock, looking used and fucked out.

The ride back to his own house was long enough that the realization that he’d really just cheated on his wife, he’d really just slept with Ryan, had sex with another person, loved him so completely, had a chance to settle over him heavy like a real weight on his chest.

He wasn’t sure how to deal with the fact that he felt both guilty for having done it, for having cheated on his wife (and for nothing, it hadn’t worked, he still loved Ryan just as much) and for having left Ryan behind especially in the state that he’d been in.

He unlocked the door of his house quietly and stepped inside the dark corridor. It was so late. Much later than he’d thought he’d be out, but he made his way up the stairs and stripped quietly once he was in his bedroom. He almost didn’t want to sleep beside his wife, thought about going down and sleeping on the couch, but then he thought about all of the questions that might bring up, and so he slid into the bed, careful not to touch her.

She rolled into his space anyways, humming softly as she placed a hand over his chest, and it shouldn’t have felt wrong, it should have felt like the most right thing in the world, but all he wanted to do was roll out of bed and run to the washroom and be sick.

“You smell funny,” she mumbled into the small space between them. “What were you drinking?”

Alex shook his head and swallowed hard. He couldn’t do this. “Too much, I think. I’m going to go sleep on the couch in case I get sick.”

Nancy rolled away from him. “I told you not to drink too much.” She sounded a little angry with him.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be fine in the morning, I’m sure. I just need to sleep it off.”

She huffed a little in frustrated annoyance, but he could see her nodding. “All right, I’ll see you in the morning. If you make a mess, clean it up.”

He nodded as he slid out of the bed feeling a little relived. His ass ached as he did so and he tried not to think about Ryan. Just a half hour ago he’d been pleased that he would be able to feel it, but now that he was with his wife, he was thinking that over a little bit.

“I will. Goodnight.”

“I love you, just try to be better next time.”

His eyes stung a little, and he swallowed past the lump in his throat. How many times had he told someone that he loved them that night?

“I will, I promise.”

And he would be better. If it was the last thing he did.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex tries to take a step forward.

Alex felt awful the next day. Truly awful. Worse than if he’d gone out drinking, really. He woke up to the sound of his girls playing in the room with him, and opened his eyes to see Lexie already in her playpen, and Victoria playing with her toys in her playhouse.

He knew that Nancy couldn’t have been far away, but she was clearly avoiding him. There wasn’t really anything that he could do to make up for it. He’d done something awful to her last night and he didn’t know how to make up for it. He’d gone against his vows and he’d thought that it would be okay to do it once as long as the thing that came out of it was the dissolution of his feelings of his feelings for Ryan.

Only that hadn’t happened. 

Did that mean that he’d really done that—cheated on his wife—for nothing? It hadn’t felt like nothing at the time. It had felt like it had meant a lot.

“You’re all bruised up,” Nancy said to him as soon as she saw him walking into the kitchen. His hand went immediately to the bruise he knew was on his neck from Ryan’s mouth the night before.

“Oh, yeah, caught a puck up high last night.”

She nodded but turned away from him. “Are you feeling up for breakfast or do you still feel like you’re going to be sick?”

Victoria was standing at his feet then, tugging on his pajama pants, obviously wanting to be picked up, and so even though he felt like he didn’t deserve her attention, he picked her up, cradling her in his arms as she wrapped her own arms around his neck and hugged him.

“Missed you, Daddy!”

His chest ached a little. Had he really been so absent from his family this whole time?

That was all the proof that he needed that he’d done the right thing last night in telling Ryan that they weren’t going to be hanging out together anymore. He needed to be with his family properly.

“I’m here now, baby,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to her cheek.

She laughed a little and returned the kiss to his cheek before squirming to be put down. He put her back down on the ground and watched as she went back to playing doctor with her toys. He felt an incredible amount of love for her. More than he could have ever felt for anyone else before.

The love he had for his two girls was more than enough to override the deep ache he felt for having left Ryan, even if he was worried that the love he had for his wife might not be enough. Even though it should have been.

“I’m okay for breakfast. I slept it all off.”

Nancy turned to him, looking him over with a critical eye. “You’re sure?”

He nodded and swallowed hard. He did love her, but he was afraid that the day would come when that wouldn’t be enough.

“I’m sure. I’m feeling a little better now.”

She nodded and sighed, stepping closer to him like she was going to kiss him.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth, though,” he said, taking a half a step back. “Trust me; you don’t want to kiss me right now.”

She gave him a funny look, but nodded and turned back to the stove. “All right. If you’re sure. Go get dressed and we’ll have breakfast as a family and then maybe we can take the girls to the park. It’s not raining today so it looks like it’ll actually be nice enough out.”

Alex nodded and turned away to head towards their bedroom. He couldn’t avoid touching her forever, even though he felt like he didn’t deserve her. He’d have to get over it or she’d wonder what was going on, and he didn’t want to have to admit what was happening between him and Ryan.

Their day spent as a family was almost enough to keep his mind off of Ryan. He spent most of his time with his daughters, pushing them on the swings or pushing them and catching them on the slides, and in that case he spent most of his time avoiding having too much contact with Nancy. He hoped that he wasn’t too obvious about it. He didn’t want to hurt her, it was just that every time that he looked at her, he remembered what had done to her, and it made the realization of it too painful.

He felt better after having spent all that time with his girls, though, their smiles and laughter always great for making him feel good through the day. Always the best medicine for whatever was ailing him. It even soothed the ache of missing Ryan a little.

By that night when he was getting ready for bed, Nancy was already under the covers, facing away from his side of the bed and he realized that he’d obviously been a little more obvious than he’d intended to be in his avoidance of her that day. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. Maybe to apologize for being a huge ass. She hadn’t done anything to deserve being treated like that, it was all about something that he’d done and not something that she’d done to deserve the treatment, but he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to apologize to her, because then she’d want to know why he’d been avoiding her, and it would all be better if he just started paying attention to her the next day and they could just pretend like today hadn’t happened.

He slid into the bed, careful to keep to his own side, and this time Nancy made no move to slide into his side, and they slept like that, keeping to their own edges of the bed, a huge space between them for the first time in their marriage and Alex felt like he’d been the one to put the wedge there. Of course he had been.

Nancy was still distant the next day, and Alex wished there was something that he could have done to make their interactions a little less awkward, but he had to go to practice and he was so, so anxious about seeing Ryan for the first time since their last interaction, and he knew that it was going to take a lot to keep himself from spending too much time around the other man.

He was going to have to remember all of the reasons that he’d decided that the thing between them was so wrong in the first place.

Roberto was in the lounge when he arrived and it seemed like he was waiting for him when he was walking through, since the other man fell into step with him immediately.

“So did you end it?”

Alex sighed and gave the goalie a bit of a dirty look. “Yes, I told you we were going to. I wasn’t lying.”

Roberto shrugged a little and gave him a look. “You don’t look very happy about it.”

Alex just shrugged a little and almost wished that the other man would leave him alone. He didn’t want to talk about it and his heart was racing a little at the thought of seeing Ryan soon.

“I’m not. But we’re doing the right thing. You said so yourself.”

Roberto shook his head. “Yeah, but I didn’t realize that you actually had it this bad for him. Seriously you look like you’re going to puke. Do you want me to take you to the washroom?”

Alex shook his head and stopped just outside the locker room. “No, I’ll be fine. I’m just a little worked up.”

Roberto reached out and clasped his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I’m here for you. You’re doing the right thing. Your family needs you. The team needs you.”

“I know. That’s why I’m doing this.”

Roberto nodded and ruffled Alex’s hair before pulling his hand back, and Alex realized that he’d changed his mind. Maybe it was better having someone who knew than it was being all alone in this thing.

“If you need someone to distract you, just tell me. Give me the signal.”

Alex gave him a look, pulling away from him a little. “What the Hell is the signal?”

Roberto shrugged a little. “I don’t know, you’re the one who needs it, you tell me.”

Alex sighed and rolled his eyes, though his chest did feel a little looser having someone to talk to so openly about this whole thing. “I’ll throw some gum at you.”

Roberto narrowed his eyes. “That’s not a very nice signal.”

“You’re the one who told me to pick one.”

It was Roberto’s turn to sigh. “Fine, throw some gum at me. Not chewed gum. That shit better still be in the wrapper.” And he pushed Alex through the doorway.

Seeing Ryan in the locker room was just as hard as he’d thought it would be. His breath caught in his throat and his chest tightened painfully and the emptiness that he’d thought he’d gotten rid of yesterday seemed to have crept back up just with a single glimpse of him.

He wondered if it would have been too obvious to just grab a hold of Roberto and pull him out of the room right then, because he wasn’t sure he could do this.

But he had to do this. He was a hockey player. A National Leaguer at that. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life hiding from one man just because he’d fallen in love with him and didn’t know how to deal with those feelings now. He’d made a promise to himself that things would go back to normal after they slept together and he’d failed at that with his wife, like Hell if he was going to fail at that with his team, too.

Ryan looked up at him from where he had been sitting talking to Chris, and they both froze in their movements, Alex stopping on his way to his stall and Ryan stopping in what appeared to be mid-sentence.

It was just for a moment, but the moment hung heavy and thick between them and it _ached_ , the look on Ryan’s face matching the anguish that he felt in his chest. How were they going to make it through the season? Forget that, how were they going to make it through the day?

Chris frowned at Ryan and waved a hand in front of his face until the other man blinked and turned his attention back to him with an apologetic grin, and Alex felt like he was able to move again, falling back into step with Roberto until they sat down at their stalls in silence. He grabbed a handful of gum packets from the bucket. Just in case.

Roberto grinned a little at him when he saw him grab for them and Henrik who was on his way to his own stall paused and raised a brow at him.

“You don’t even like gum, are you planning a prank? I don’t think Torts would enjoy that today.”

Alex sighed. He wasn’t really up for chitchat, not even with the likes of his friends on the team. He just wanted to make it through the day, and that was already proving to be hard enough.

He turned to face Henrik who was grinning a little at him, and he tried to return the smile. He wasn’t _mad_ at his teammates. He didn’t want to put any unnecessary space between them. Not when they were working so hard for points in the standings and they needed to maintain as much team chemistry as possible, even through his own personal drama.

“No, no pranks. Just, uh, wanted to have some gum today.”

Henrik nodded, looking like he was satisfied with that. “Good. The last thing we need is a lecture today. Just want to get in and get out as easy as possible.”

Alex nodded in response. He wanted that, too, even if his own house was hardly a better choice than this was for him to be. It seemed like he’d created two bad spaces out of his two homes. It was his own fault, really.

Henrik walked away and Alex went back to putting his gear on, and even though there were a couple of times where he felt his gaze sliding over to Ryan next to him, and a couple of more times that he felt the other man’s gaze on him, the small pile of gum maintained its numbers in the corner of his stall. He was a little proud of himself as he walked onto the ice, gliding onto the smooth surface easily.

At last, a place that really felt like home.

It was the only place that he’d been in the last couple of days where he truly felt at home. He was able to skate and pass the puck between the twins and shoot on Roberto and even score a couple of times, and it felt good. He was almost able to put Ryan out of his mind, and it was good. It was the small sliver of hope that he would be able to get over this thing. Or at least that he’d be able to put it aside while he was skating during the games.

Hockey was always that thing that was able to distract him from even the worst of the things that were happening in his life.

They listened to Torts outline their game plan against the Blues before skating off the ice and heading to get changed and head into the gym for some off ice workout.

He was a little surprised when he was walking past the trainer’s rooms and a hand darted out from one of the rooms and yanked him in. He should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to get out of practice as easily as all that.

Sure enough, when he straightened himself out and managed to calm his racing heart he was looking up into the face of Ryan Kesler. His heart started to race again. Why had the other man dragged him into an empty room, he was pretty sure he’d made himself pretty clear the last time they’d been alone together that nothing was going to happen between them again.

“Kes—“

Ryan shook his head, leaning back against the door so that Alex couldn’t just walk out.

“Sorry, Burr, I know I’m not the person you want to see right now, but I needed to see you. Just to talk, I swear. I didn’t know any other way to get you to talk to me.”

Alex nodded a little shakily. Ryan was probably right. There wasn’t much other way that he would have agreed to talk to him today. He’d been doing his damned best to ignore him and the way his whole body responded to just being in the same room as him.

“Okay, so talk. We can’t be alone together for too long, people will notice that we’re gone.”

Ryan shook his head, crossing his arms and looking entirely too entitled. It irritated Alex a little. “Nobody knows about us, nobody will think anything about it.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Don’t think about it like that. You don’t know how easy it would be for someone to just think that it’s weird that we’re always hiding away together. Besides it _is_ weird for two guys to hide away in a room in the dark together.”

“Do you want me to turn on the lights?”

Alex huffed out an annoyed breath. “Don’t be a smart ass right now.”

Mostly because a part of Alex found that part of Ryan attractive and he wasn’t in any position to find any part of Ryan attractive just then.

“Sorry. I just—I needed to apologize about the last time that we saw each other. I shouldn’t have said some of the things that I said.”

Alex could easily recall the last time they’d seen each other, Ryan standing there in nothing but his socks, a condom still hanging from his cock, and wearing an expression that looked lost and confused. He remembered every word.

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

Ryan frowned at him. “I’m trying to apologize to you. I shouldn’t have made it harder for you. I know you’re trying to do the right thing for me and my family as well as for you and yours. It was wrong of me to push you and try to get you to change your mind.”

Alex nodded, swallowing hard. It was a little hard to agree with him, even though he knew that what Ryan was saying was true. It was wrong that Ryan had told him that he loved him so much that he hadn’t wanted them to stop seeing each other, but he didn’t want to think about Ryan _not_ telling him that he loved him.

“Okay. Thank you for apologizing. I accept your apology. Now I really need to go.”

Sighing, Ryan pushed away from the door. “I don’t want us to stop being friends, Burr. You’ve been my friend for so long, but you can hardly look at me now, not even on the ice. We can’t play like that. We need to work this thing out so that if we’re going to go back to being normal, we can be normal again.”

Alex nodded. “We’ll be fine. It’s just going to take a little bit of time.”

Ryan looked down and nodded and Alex made for the door. Their arms brushed together and a spark of warmth rushed through him and he felt a little overwhelmed by it and he looked up to see Ryan’s face and he could see the dark circles under his eyes and how tired he looked and imagined he’d had a similar time at home to what Alex had had and he felt so drawn to him, just that one little touch sparking something in him and he was reaching up to wrap his hand around the back of Ryan’s neck to pull his head down and pressing their lips together in a searing kiss.

Ryan’s hands came easily to cradle Alex’s face, holding him in place while his tongue mapped out the inside of his mouth, sucking on his bottom lip and obviously just trying to take what he could from the kiss.

It only lasted a minute or two before Alex realized what he was doing and he pushed himself away from Ryan, wiping at his burning mouth a little.

“Fuck. This is why we needed space, Kes. So that shit like this doesn’t happen again.”

Ryan just looked a little stunned by the whole thing, licking his lips a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. It’s not really my fault, though. _You_ kissed _me_. I just came here to apologize to you. I didn’t think you’d jump me.”

Alex flushed darkly. “I didn’t jump you. I just—ugh, shut up, you’re making it worse.”

Ryan shook his head and licked his lips again. “Are you still going to go?”

Alex wished that he had his pile of gum and Roberto somewhere in the vicinity. 

“I should go. This thing is--- it’s going to ruin everything.”

Ryan reached out for Alex again and the look on his face was so open that Alex was leaning closer to his touch. Just one more kiss—it couldn’t hurt anything, could it? He already had so many things to apologize to his wife for. If she could understand those things, that he’d done those things for the better of their marriage, maybe she could understand his weakness here.

The door opened and startled him, causing him to jump back, a guilty look crossing his face. 

Roberto’s head peeked inside and he looked between Ryan and Alex and sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh for—seriously, you guys? I thought you were done with this. Burr, you were supposed to get me if something happened. You can’t even keep it in your pants for two days?”

Alex flushed a little darker, stepping a little further away from Ryan who was looking between Roberto and Alex with narrowing, accusing eyes.

“You _told_ him? _You_? The captain of keeping everything as under wraps as possible? After all of those lectures you gave me about keeping things away from the team? You told _Lu_ of all people?”

Roberto made a sound of indignation.

“I didn’t tell him, he figured it out on his own! Because of how careless we were being!”

Ryan shook his head. “You didn’t even tell me. Were you just planning to keep it a secret? That someone knew about this thing that involved me, too?”

Alex felt a little bit of shame for not having told Ryan about Roberto, but really he’d been caught up in feeling so ashamed about what he was doing _with_ Ryan, that he hadn’t thought about informing him about Roberto. To be honest, it just hadn’t seemed that important.

“There were so many other things going on! I was busy thinking about what to do about you and, uh, and my wife, you know!”

Ryan shook his head, and reached for the doorknob, yanking the door open and almost knocking Roberto off balance as he did so.

“Because you’re the only person who has anything to lose in this, aren’t you? Jesus, Burr.” Ryan shook his head, stalking out of the room and looking a lot like Alex had betrayed him.

Alex stood there with Roberto who looked wholly uncomfortable.

“Well, that probably could have gone better,” the goalie piped up, toying with the doorknob.

Groaning, Alex stepped towards the door. “Oh shut up. I just want to get ready and go home.”

Robert reached out and ruffled his hair and Alex tried to pull away from it. “That’ll teach you to fool around with a married guy in the locker room. It was only a matter of time before someone caught you. You’re just lucky it was me.”

Yeah, Alex felt very lucky. His lips were still burning from where Ryan had kissed him.

The rest of the week at home went much the same as the few days before. His wife was still pretty much avoiding him and they were still sleeping on opposite sides of the bed, and he’d even caught her a couple of times with his phone in her hands, but she’d claimed that she’d just mistaken it for her own—which was weird, because her phone didn’t look anything like his. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but whatever it was, she seemed a little frustrated at not having found it.

He did get a chance to spend a bit more time with his girls before the team left for their California road trip on Sunday, and he kissed each of them on the cheek as he stood by the front door, his bags in his hands. He hesitated a little before leaning in and pressing a chaste kiss to Nancy’s cheek, too, though they both seemed a little uncomfortable with the contact.

He’d have to figure something out, there, because it couldn’t be normal how things were working out between them. He’d done what he’d done so that things would be easier between them, but things just seemed to be harder, more complicated.

Ryan had been easier to avoid since he’d seemed entirely intent on avoiding Alex after finding out about Roberto, and Alex wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but it made a part of him ache. He’d lost his friend as well as his one-time lover. He’d lost his wife, too.

All he had was his daughters and his hockey and he was absolutely terrified that he could lose either one of those things at any minute.

He’d never been gladder that they didn’t have to share rooms any more than he was on this road trip. He couldn’t imagine having to share a room with someone—especially with Ryan in this kind of situation.

He picked up his room key and headed up to his room to put his things away when there was a knock on the door. His heart thumped a little in his chest and he wondered if it might be Ryan. They had originally planned to have their affair on this trip. Could the other man still be thinking about that? Alex had to focus on trying to find a way to reconnect with his wife now, he couldn’t think about having another tryst with Ryan, especially not now.

He steeled himself to try to let the other man down lightly when he pulled open the door to see Kevin standing on the other side of it. He let out a breath that was almost disappointed.

“Kev, what’s up?”

Kevin raised a brow, tilting his head to the side. “You look disappointed to see me. My feelings are almost hurt, Burr.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Oh shut up. What do you want?”

Kevin grinned a little. “We’re going out for dinner. Hurry up, you’re coming with us.”

Alex didn’t have to ask who ‘us’ included. Usually the core group of guys went out to dinner together most nights on the road and he imagined that tonight wouldn’t be too different. Ryan would be there.

“All right. Hang on and let me get my wallet.” He closed the door in Kevin’s face and stepped into the washroom. Of course he already had his wallet on him. He just needed a second to get himself under complete control.

When he opened the door again, Kevin looked vaguely annoyed. “You ready, Princess?”

Alex gave him the finger and they walked to the elevator together.

Dinner wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it was going to be. There were a few raised eyebrows when he sat down next to Roberto instead of next to Ryan like he usually did, but the conversation didn’t stop or anything like that, and Ryan didn’t even lift his gaze or his attention from where he’d been talking to Dan about their kids.

It seemed like maybe Ryan had actually moved on and was really connecting with his family again. Alex was jealous of that. Had getting angry with Alex really been all it had taken for the other man to snap back to normalcy again? Why couldn’t he find something to get angry with Ryan for so that the same thing could happen to him?

He spent most of the dinner trying not to send too many furtive glances in Ryan’s direction as he carried on a rather stilted conversation with Roberto about their own children and then about how they were going to try and actually wrestle some points away from their new Divisional Rivals. It was the topic that most of the table was talking about, so it seemed safe enough.

Once or twice he even made a comment that Ryan had no choice but to comment back on. He had no idea why that mattered so much to him now—he really ought to have been glad that Ryan had moved on. That was what they were both supposed to be doing, but something about the fact that Ryan had done it without him, made his stomach feel tight and uneasy. 

They made it back to the hotel in one piece and Alex was only a little wobbly after a few too many glasses of wine. He’d needed something to take the sting out of the night, but wasn’t enough that it would affect his on-ice performance the next night. He was always careful about that sort of thing. 

“Make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit,” Roberto was saying with a sigh as he guided him to his room. “I’ll come and check on you in the morning to make sure you’re still alive.”

Alex rolled his eyes and pushed Roberto away from him as Ryan walked past them in the hallway barely giving them a second glance. His chest ached at that.

“Leave me alone, I’ll be fine. I’m not one of your kids, you know.”

Roberto snorted at that. “I’ll believe that when you can prove it. Now drink lots of water and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Alex nodded and pushed the key card into the slot before shoving the door open and flicking on the light so that he could work his way into the room. He’d been so glad earlier that they weren’t rooming with anyone, but now that he was a little drunk and all alone in the big room, he kind of missed Mason and how he’d always managed to fill the room with his voice and his usually upbeat presence. He definitely missed Ryan, but he imagined that if he’d had Mason as his roommate again, that feeling wouldn’t have been quite so bad. Or maybe if he’d just had a roommate at all. But Mason was playing for Toronto, and the league had decided that grown men didn’t need to share hotel rooms with each other anymore.

He stepped into the washroom and filled a glass with water, gulping it down and refilling it a few more times to make sure he drank plenty more before heading back into the main room and stripping himself down to his boxers.

He was going to be better tomorrow. He was going to stop obsessing about Ryan, and he was going to take it as something good that Ryan had gotten over him, and he was going to try harder to follow in his footsteps. He needed to do something because his life was falling apart.

He’d just pulled the bedspread back and was about to climb into the bed when he heard a loud knocking on the door and sighed. Roberto was probably worried that he’d drowned in his own pity or something. Really, he wasn’t that bad off and he wasn’t even as drunk as all that. He’d only had a few—well, maybe more than a few-- glasses of wine.

Alex made his way barefooted to the door and pulled it open. “Lu, I’m fine, really—“ 

His breath caught in his throat and he stared into the eyes of the last person that he’d expected to see on the other side.

“Ryan. What are you doing here?”


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad decisions are always made when there's too much drinking and too many feelings involved.

Ryan looked awkward standing just outside the door, and Alex wasn’t sure that he hadn’t had entirely too much to drink after all if he was imagining this. How much had he had to drink again?

“I have to talk to you.”

Alex shouldn’t step back and let him in; he really shouldn’t, because there was no way that it could lead to anything good. He’d been drinking and they’d been doing so well and avoiding each other lately and even though that had left an empty feeling in Alex’s chest, it was the right thing.

“Okay, come in.” He stepped back to let the other man in, and let out a heavy breath as Ryan pushed past him to step into the room.

He let the door close itself heavily with a loud, decisive click (like it really meant something, that click) and turned back to Ryan who was stepping into the main room looking extremely agitated.

“Oh, were you getting ready for bed?”

Alex frowned a little and rubbed at his eyes. He was definitely not imagining this. “Yeah, we have a game tomorrow, remember?”

Ryan nodded and turned back to face him. “Alone? There’s no one else here?”

The look on his face was disbelieving, he was sure. “Of course I’m alone. After everything—what did you think I was doing in here? Why are you here?”

He felt a little naked standing there just dressed in his boxers, all ready for bed, and Ryan still completely dressed, like he hadn’t even thought to take more than his suit jacket off from after dinner.

Ryan crossed his arms and leaned heavily against the desk. “What about Lu? I saw you guys in the hallway.”

Alex thought back to a similar altercation that they’d had on nearly this same road trip but reversed when he’d thought that Ryan was fooling around with Kevin. He wondered if his accusation had seemed as ridiculous to Ryan as Ryan’s did to him in that moment.

“Lu? Are you serious? He was just making sure that I got to my room all right. I had—what does it matter? You’ve been avoiding me all week.”

Ryan uncrossed his arms, shifted his weight and then crossed them again. “I just—I wanted to make sure that you weren’t—Lu knew about us, and I didn’t know that he knew about us, and then you were with him _all the time_ , and I thought maybe you’d just moved on.”

Alex flushed a little and crossed his own arms. “I’m not cheating on my wife again. And it would be impossible to cheat on _you_ , because we’re not— That’s why we’re not still… you know.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Fucking. It’s why we’re not still fucking. You can say it, you know. You’re a big boy.”

Sighing, Alex threw his hands up in the air. He felt simultaneously like he hadn’t had enough to drink and also like he’d had too much to deal with this. His brain felt all out of whack. “We only fucked once. Don’t get ahead of yourself.” He felt a little annoyed with the other man. How could he ignore Alex for so long and then just come waltzing into his room like he owned it and like he owned the right to make sure that Alex wasn’t sleeping with anyone else? Like it was possible that Alex was betraying him or something?

“But we still did it. We could still be doing it if—“

Alex shook his head, cutting that thought off before it could go too far. “Stop, Kes. We couldn’t still be doing it because if we were doing it we would be cheating on our wives.”

Ryan rolled his eyes and took a step closer to Alex. Alex swallowed hard but held his ground. He wasn’t going to step down from Ryan. “Are you telling me that you’re not still cheating on her a little bit? That you don’t still think about me all of the time? Even when you’re fucking her?”

Alex frowned a little bit. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d really been with his wife, much less how much he might have or have not thought about Ryan during it. He wondered if that meant that Ryan was still sleeping with his wife, and the thought made him feel a little sick in the pit of his stomach. “That’s not the same thing as falling into bed with you.”

“Isn’t it, though? You’re still betraying her. I feel like I’m still betraying Andrea every single day because all I’m thinking about is you. I haven’t slept with my wife in a month, Burr. She’s starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Can you imagine? ED or something. I guess I can thank God that she’s not at the point where she thinks there’s something wrong with _her_ , because what would I do then?”

Alex tried not to feel relieved that Ryan was apparently not sleeping with his wife right now, either, and then thought back to Nancy looking through his phone and pretending like she’d thought it was her own. She was suspicious of him, too.

“I’m pretty sure Nancy thinks I’m seeing another woman.”

Ryan huffed out a breath and shook his head. “Well you’re not doing that at least.”

Alex’s frown deepened. “How is this any better than that?”

“Because she can’t give you what I’m giving you. She can’t fuck you like I can fuck you. Nobody can give you what I can give you. Just me.”

There was no lie in those words and Ryan knew it. Alex knew they were the truth, too, and that was the real problem with this whole thing. Nancy couldn’t give him what Ryan could give him—or maybe he just wasn’t letting her. Maybe that was his problem. It definitely wasn’t hers.

“I doubt she’d think it was better.”

Ryan shrugged. “You might be surprised.”

Alex breathed out heavily. “What do you want, Kes? What did you really come here for?”

Ryan took another step closer to him and there was hardly any space separating them now. He could smell the beer on Ryan’s breath and wondered if that was what had really convinced Ryan to finally visit his room. Part of him hoped not. Though, if his mind hadn’t been so fogged out by the wine running through his own system, he might have regained his senses and kicked the other man out of his room. He should still do that. He probably wouldn’t do it—that would have been too smart a thing to do, and Alex wasn’t the smartest guy in the world. Especially not when he’d been drinking, and, as life had proven to him in the past month or so, not when it came down to Ryan.

“I couldn’t stand the idea of you being with Lu. It made me feel sick. I had to make sure you were still mine.”

Alex swallowed hard even has Ryan’s hand came up to cup his cheek lightly, thumb brushing his cheekbone lightly. “I was never really yours, Kes,” he breathed, forcing himself to think beyond the simple warmth of the touch.

“Liar. You’re lying to yourself if you really believe that.”

Alex didn’t really believe it. They both knew it.

Ryan didn’t waste any time in the moment that Alex stood there letting his touch linger on his face, and he lowered his head the small distance required and closed his mouth over Alex’s, kissing him slowly. 

It was similar to their first kiss, slow and exploratory, but it was a little sloppy, and Alex couldn’t help himself. He whimpered a little into it and clutched at Ryan’s shirt knowing that he was probably wrinkling it, pressing his body against the other man’s as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. This was what he’d been missing. All of Ryan’s attention focused on him.

Ryan’s fingers tangled in his short hair, tugging lightly and he tilted Alex’s head back as he kissed him deep and a little desperately. They were clutching at each other and one of Ryan’s hands slipped out of Alex’s hair to slide down his bare chest, nails grazing against his nipple and making him gasp into the kiss, arching his back just a little as the sensation of it jolted all the way through him and made his cock jerk just a little.

He wanted Ryan, his whole body was hot with it and it was hard to remember why it was a bad idea when he was tied up in his arms like this. When wine and arousal were mixed in his blood and he had Ryan pressed so tightly to him, kissing any protestation from his mouth.

“I want you,” Ryan’s words mirrored his thoughts, and Alex’s fingers were already working at the buttons of Ryan’s shirt, making quick work of them, even as sluggish as his mind was. It made him hotter to hear the words from Ryan’s mouth. To know exactly how much the other man wanted him, too. “I don’t know how not to want you.” 

He sounded almost as desperate as the movement of Alex’s fingers as his hands slipped into the open folds of Ryan’s shirt, exploring the bare skin underneath and clutching him a little tighter as he dove in for another sloppy kiss. He didn’t know how not to want Ryan, either. That was the problem, wasn’t it?

“I want you too,” he admitted between their lips, biting softly at Ryan’s and sliding his fingers lower to begin unbuckling the other man’s belt. He didn’t know what he was doing and he was sure that he was going to regret every second of this tomorrow, but all he could think of in the moment was how it felt to be held by Ryan again, kissed by him and touched by him and he wanted more of it. Needed him.

“Good, good, I’m glad you’re finally admitting that to yourself,” Ryan said kissing him again as he shrugged his unbuttoned shirt in one movement, tossing it aside.

Alex made a soft sound of appreciation for all of the skin exposed to him then, and lowered his head to drag his lips against Ryan’s collarbone, Ryan’s fingers still tangled in his hair. 

“We have a game tomorrow,” Ryan said groaning softly. “I guess that means you won’t let me fuck you.”

The reminder of the game seemed to sober him up just a little, and he tensed up from where his mouth had been dragging along a small line of freckles on Ryan’s shoulder. He wished that he could feel Ryan inside of him again, but he knew that he’d still feel the fullness of the other man inside of him the next day and that reminder while they were skating in a full game that mattered for points? He couldn’t risk that level of distraction. This was bad enough.

“No, I have to skate.”

Ryan sighed a little and Alex thought it was a little over dramatic, but turned his head to continue pressing kisses along the skin exposed to his lips. They’d figure something else out.

He knew he shouldn’t be letting anyone else fuck him, anyways. One time could be considered a mistake—twice was—well, twice was a habit, wasn’t it? Not so easily forgiven.

But he didn’t want to think about his wife or how easily she would or would not forgive this mistake of his, because he really just wanted to think about how in the last week since he’d been in Ryan’s arms, this was the first time he’d felt truly _good_ again. At home. He didn’t want to focus on how messed up that was, but it was true. His lips over Ryan’s skin felt right and comfortable, and in his inebriated state he could forgive himself, even if he did have the knowledge that he wouldn’t feel nearly as forgiving in the morning.

That knowledge wasn’t enough to stop him from making this mistake in the first place.

“There’s plenty of other things we can do,” Ryan said with a grin that Alex could hear as he pulled on Alex’s hair almost enough to sting until Alex pulled his mouth back from the skin he’d been tasting and Ryan kissed him hard on the mouth again, backing him up until the back of his knees hit the bed and he fell back onto it with no grace at all, limbs spread all over. 

“There, that’s better. You look really fucking hot like that, babe.”

Alex felt hot all over and he decided that he really liked it when Ryan called him babe.

“You’re still half dressed,” Alex pointed out with a bit of a pout, reaching out for Ryan. The wine made him feel bolder than he’d felt the last time they’d been like this.

Ryan just swatted his hands away, though, and finished unbuckling his belt, unfastening his pants and shoving them down his legs before kicking them aside with his underwear so that he was standing in front of Alex stark naked. Alex licked his lips a little.

He really liked the way Ryan looked naked, and since the last time they’d been like this, he’d done everything that he could to make sure that he didn’t spare any extra glances at the other man in the locker room, not wanting to punish himself any more than he already was. 

“Now I’m more dressed than you are,” he pointed out, reaching down to tug lightly on his boxers.

Ryan grinned a little and reached down to grab Alex lightly through his boxers, massaging his cock through the thin fabric and making him gasp a little in response.

“I’m pretty sure I’m aware of your state of dress, Burr.”

Alex made a face at him and kicked out just a little in impatience. He was already half hard and ready to actually do something. Something that wasn’t just staring at Ryan, regardless of how good it was to just be in his presence like this again after a week of feeling completely separated from him. How good it was to be the subject of his attention again, despite how much he was supposed to be avoiding it.

“Well, are you going to do something about it, or should I do it myself?”

Ryan rolled his eyes and moved his hand from Alex’s cock to grab at the elastic of the boxers, pulling them down slowly. The room was cool and the more he was exposed to it, he shivered. 

“I take it back,” Ryan was saying and Alex blinked back to reality, frowning a little in confusion. He wondered if he might have misunderstood something, because Ryan was tossing his boxers the side of the bed. It was hard to imagine that he was misunderstanding something about the other man’s intent when he was rubbing his hands up and down his legs with every bit of that intent written on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when I said you looked hot before. You look much hotter like this, all naked and spread out for me.”

Alex flushed a little and he wasn’t sure if it was because of all of the wine he’d had before or if it was because of Ryan’s gaze fixed so intently on him, but he felt hot all over and couldn’t help but to shift a little impatiently again.

“Thanks, but could you get to it? I’m starting to get a little cold.”

Ryan huffed out a breath and lowered himself onto the bed so that his arms and legs bracketed Alex and he was kissing him softly, almost teasingly.

“I dreamed about having you like this again.”

Alex smiled into the kiss. He shouldn’t be as happy about that as he was. Ryan had hidden it fairly well, they’d been spending so much time apart and he’d been avoiding Alex so much that he’d thought that the other man was over him, but a part of him was relieved to hear that he wasn’t alone on the island of still being lost in this thing. They were a mess.

“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” he finally admitted, staring up at Ryan and threading fingers through his hair before kissing him again. He didn’t want to stop for a moment. Didn’t want to give himself time to think about what they were doing too much, because he didn’t want to realize that what he was doing was going against everything that he’d promised himself that he would do. It was easier if he just lost himself in the taste and feel of Ryan. It was easier to forget his vows, his wife, his family, his promises, everything else, when Ryan’s hands were on his body.

“I’m going to make you feel unbelievable,” Ryan was promising him as his lips moved down from Alex’s lips to slide against his smooth jaw, and against the long column of his throat. Alex tilted his head back to give him better access. 

“I trust you,” he breathed, shifting his hips a little anxiously. He was already feeling a little riled up by the whole thing, and Ryan’s hands and mouth were nowhere near close enough to his cock. He did trust Ryan, more than anything, but he wished that he would get on with it a little faster than he was.

“You’re not really all for the patience today, are you?”

Alex frowned down at him and just shrugged a little. “I’m just—I just really want you and you’re taking your damned time.”

And he needed to make sure that his mind didn’t wander too much.

Ryan nodded like he understood what Alex meant even though he hadn’t said that much, and lowered his head so that his mouth closed over one of his nipples, his teeth grazing it and tongue sliding over it after. Alex gasped and arched his back into the feel of it. Yes, that was the kind of distraction he needed.

His fingers threaded through Ryan’s hair a little tighter and he pressed the man’s face a little more into his chest, wanting more of that, and Ryan didn’t disappoint, he repeated the motion, scraping his teeth against his other nipple and then sliding his tongue against the sensitive nub before grinning up at Alex. 

“You’re so sensitive. I like that.”

Alex groaned in frustration, his cock bobbing up against his belly. “I know you do. You like anything that tells you that you’re doing a good job, you, uh, mm, uh, egomaniac. Now stop stopping.”

Ryan laughed and the puff of warm air felt amazing against his already sensitive nipples and he shivered under it. “I’ll do what I want, Burr. You know that.”

Alex rolled his eyes, but nodded and tried pushing Ryan’s head down a little, hoping that maybe with a little bit of guidance, the other man might take a hint and actually start getting on with it.

Instead, though, Ryan reached one hand down between them and wrapped his fingers loosely around Alex’s cock, stroking him slowly. Alex’s eyes fluttered closed and he decided that he could deal with that. He could take that as a consolation prize. Ryan’s fingers were rough and big and great. 

“Satisfied?”

Alex nodded a little jerkily, even though he knew from experience that Ryan could give him so much more than this.

When he peeked open an eye, Ryan was staring down at him and his expression was so open and there was just _something_ there that his drunk mind didn’t want to try to comprehend and so he just closed them again and pressed his hips up into the touch, breathing a little harder. 

“Are you just going to make me come like this?” He asked, licking his lips. He wouldn’t mind that so much, even if he might feel a little bit disappointed.

“No, of course not. I just want to see you fall apart before I bring you the rest of the way there.”

Alex groaned a little and shifted again. His body was hot and he was already getting fairly close just from being jerked off the way Ryan was jerking him. “Well then you better stop soon, I’m already pretty close.”

Ryan chuckled a little and pulled his hand back and Alex had to open his eyes then to follow whatever Ryan was going to do. The other man was shifting his weight on the bed so that he was situated between Alex’s legs, his face hovering just above Alex’s cock. His breath caught in his throat.

“Kes—“

Ryan glanced up at him, that look on his face again, and this time Alex didn’t look away, just reached down and dragged his fingers along the curve of Ryan’s cheek before pulling it back so that Ryan could grip his cock at the base and take his cock into his mouth until his mouth met his hand and they moved in tandem, working his cock in a rhythm that had Alex gasping and groaning, working hard to keep his gaze focused on the sight in front of him. He really didn’t want to miss the show.

He reached out again and brushed his fingers against the same spot on Ryan’s face, this time feeling his cock stretching out the skin there and groaning at how hot that made him feel. Ryan’s eyes lifted to meet his gaze and he fought to keep control of himself, not to thrust deeper into the other man’s mouth as Ryan bobbed his head a little, stroking him in time with his mouth’s movements.

It wouldn’t take much like this, either, to have him coming and he knew it, too. He could feel the heat of arousal tight in his belly and the way his balls were already pulled tight up to his body. He was already so close.

“Feels great, Ryan, I’m close—“

Ryan popped off of his cock with an obscene sound, licking his lips and shaking his head slowly. “Not yet.”

Alex groaned a little in frustration, his body tight with being so close twice already and denied both times. “What, why not?”

“Because I still want to feel inside of you.”

Alex flushed a little at the straightforwardness of the comment. “I have to skate tomorrow. You can’t fuck me tonight.”

Ryan shook his head. “I know that. Besides, we don’t have what we need for that. But I can still feel you, can’t I?”

It took a moment to sink in, but after a minute or so, Alex was nodded and spreading his legs open a little for Ryan so that he could do as he wanted.

Ryan lifted his head a little and sucked two fingers into his mouth, keeping his gaze focused firmly on Alex’s as he did so. The sight of it made him shiver a little. 

“You ready, babe?”

Alex swallowed hard and nodded, still watching Ryan. Ryan grinned that same cocky grin that Alex found weirdly and annoyingly irresistible at him and traced one wet finger around his rim teasing him and making his hips twitch a little. He wanted to feel it inside of him, and he wanted to feel it inside of him right now.

“Come on…”

Ryan grinned a little wider and pressed that finger slowly inside of Alex, moving it in small, practiced thrusts until it was past the first knuckle and buried inside of him, and it felt great. Doubly so, when Ryan leaned forward and licked at the leaking tip of his cock.

Alex spread his legs impossibly wider, wanting to feel more of that touch, needing it. Ryan rewarded him by moving his finger in a thrusting movement as though he were actually fucking him with his finger, and grabbed his cock with his free hand so that he could suck him into his mouth once more.

“Fuck.” Alex breathed, arching into the feel of it all.

It was prefect. He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Of course Ryan would have learned exactly what his body liked just by the one time they’d been together. Ryan was something of a perfectionist and this was no different than learning a new play on the ice, really.

The combination of the two sensations was enough that Alex had to lower his head back onto the pillow and stare up at the ceiling because he just couldn’t hold his head up anymore. He was breathing hard and moving his hips a little restlessly, and when Ryan pushed a second finger inside of him, he groaned loudly, pressing down onto it and moving his hips with it before realizing that he’d almost dislodged his cock from the other man’s mouth.

Ryan did pull his mouth back from his cock, just jerking him in time with the thrusts of his fingers, but he hardly pulled away. “I wish this was my dick inside of you. I can still remember how hot and tight you were, Alex. You were fucking perfect. I dream about fucking you again all the time. Sometimes when I’m still awake.”

His lips were brushing against Alex’s cock with every word and he was breathing heavily at the words, closing his eyes and trying not to picture Ryan with his hands fisting his cock and thinking about fucking Alex. That was just too much.

“I’m gonna come. Let me come.”

Ryan was nodding, Alex could see the top of his head, and he pushed his hips down into the feel of those fingers, letting out a bit of a yelp with Ryan twisted them and pushed them up and found his sweet spot, massaging against it as he jerked him.

“Ryan, Ryan,” he chanted as he pressed down onto the fingers and then up into the warm circle of Ryan’s fist jerking him off just the way he liked it. He was close, his balls pulled up tight to his body, and he was going to come and nothing was going to stop him this time.

“Come for me, babe. Come on, do it.”

The words were just what he needed to push him over the edge, and Alex groaned loudly as he came, spilling hot and messy over Ryan’s fist and onto his own chest. He’d hate the mess later, but right now his body was still tightening around the fingers inside of him, intensifying the feel of those fingers pressed against him on the inside, and it was really fucking great.

He let out another soft moan of protest when Ryan pulled them out, and lifted his head a little exhaustedly when Ryan pulled away from him.

“Sorry, you just looked so fucking good,” Ryan breathed, reaching down to stroke himself, and Alex shook his head, turning himself onto his side. 

“I have an idea. Put your cock between my legs and fuck me like that.”

Ryan groaned a little bit this time and they moved so that he was spooned in behind Alex, his cock sliding between Alex’s thighs, and Alex thought it might be easier if they had lube of some sort, but he’d only ever done this with his wife before and she was sort of self-lubricating. No, he was definitely not going to compare anything he’d done with his wife to something he was doing with Ryan. Especially not something they were doing in the bedroom. That was crossing a line.

“Fuck,” Ryan was breathing, lifting a hand to Alex’s front and wiping up some of the come there to smear it between over his cock, and he might have thought that was gross if he’d been thinking about anything other than the thick slide of Ryan’s cock between his thighs as the other man began rutting against him, thrusting slowly and wished that that cock was sliding inside of him instead of teasing the outside of his ass cheeks with every outward thrust. “You’re so hot.”

Alex flushed a little and his cock gave a useless twitch as Ryan held his hips tightly as Alex squeezed his legs tightly together, and felt as Ryan continued thrusting against him until his breath was stuttering against the back of Alex’s neck and he was gasping for breath, groaning out Alex’s name and coming messy and sticky between Alex’s legs.

Alex had never felt anything like that sensation before, but there was something about feeling the absolute proof that he’d been the reason that Ryan had come that made him feel powerful and hot once more, and made him wish that he were younger so that he could get it up again right then.

They lay there in the aftermath, curled together and Ryan’s arm thrown over Alex’s waist as they breathed heavily together. Alex knew that he was a mess of sweat and come and the world was spinning a little still, but he didn’t care. He’d feel awful about what he’d done in the morning, but that was a few hours still from now, and he had that time to feel good about being with Ryan. Save the regret for the morning.

“I love you,” Ryan murmured against the back of his neck.

Alex smiled softly and turned a little so that he could kiss the other man on the mouth.

“I love you, too.”

After a few minutes of lying like that, Ryan started to stand up and Alex sat up with him, frowning a little. “What are you doing?”

“I thought you’d want me to leave? You seem like the kind of guy who would want me to leave.”

Alex knew that he should want Ryan to leave. That had been something that he’d been so adamant about before, but he didn’t want him to go at all. In fact, he wanted to keep this tentative world that they’d built for as long as possible.

“No. Stay with me.”

Ryan raised a brow but nodded in agreement. “Okay, I’ll stay. But you should probably shower.”

Alex grinned at him and nodded. He felt pretty gross, actually. He could feel the come drying between his legs, and that was a messy feeling that he didn’t wish on anyone. He moved to stand and felt a little shaky on his feet.

“You’re right. Want to join me?”

Ryan looked surprised, but nodded. “Yeah, I’ll join you. I don’t know how clean you’re going to get, but I’ll join you.”

That was the idea. As long as he kept himself distracted in this, he was fine. 

They made their way into the washroom, and Alex reached into the shower to turn it on, making sure that it was hot enough, before turning towards Ryan who was watching him with a heated gaze.

“Do you really think you can get it up already?”

Ryan shrugged a little. “I’m not sure, but I’ll bet that you can.”

Alex wasn’t so sure, but then Ryan was backing him into the shower, and the water felt so good beating down onto his skin, and it was hot and the steam just fogged his mind further and it provided yet another layer of distraction to this whole thing, made it seem like a fantasy more than anything else, and that was good. That was great.

“Let’s see what happens when I do this.” And Ryan’s fingers were wrapping around his cock, stroking him slowly, and he felt his body responding fairly quickly, his cock hardening in response to the stimulation and he groaned a little.

“You know, we don’t have to do this, we can just get clean,” he murmured, his hips moving restlessly into the touch.

“Try saying that when your dick isn’t hard and in my hand.”

Alex tried to make a face at him, but he was too busy moving his hips in time with Ryan’s hand, and it didn’t take him very long, either, Ryan’s mouth came down onto his and he was kissing him hard and sloppy while he jerked him off and it felt really good, like they had all the time in the world to do whatever they wanted to do and then he was coming, like a slow build this time instead of the frantic one they’d built before. It felt great and almost comfortable, to be standing in the shower, his cock softening slowly in Ryan’s hand and the water beating against his back. Almost like a domestic bliss that he could have had in some alternate lifetime.

He was panting against Ryan’s mouth as they pulled back, and there was water getting in his eyes, and he head to lift his hands to wipe it away.

“Here, let me help you get clean.” He gestured for Alex to turn around, and he did.

Nobody had ever cleaned him before, but there was Ryan, bar of soap in his hand, kneeling down and forcing Alex to spread his legs a little so that he could scrub him clean there, making sure to get all the come out of the hair there so that he wouldn’t have a sticky situation for the rest of the night. It felt really good, extremely intimate, and he was a little surprised by how much he liked the attention of it. He was sensitive to the touch of Ryan’s fingers and even to the slippery slide of the soap as it slid between his ass cheeks and he let out a soft puff of breath. He’d already come twice that night, he knew that, realistically, he wouldn’t be getting it up for a while yet, but it still felt really good. Nice.

“Feel better?” Ryan asked as he stood back up, soap moving up over Alex’s back now in soft circles, just cleaning him.

Alex nodded and turned around. Ryan moved the soap over his chest slowly, scrubbing him clean. He hadn’t thought that he needed a shower tonight, had just planned to have one at the rink tomorrow, but it actually felt quite nice to have a shower with the other man and to be able to put his hands on him.

“Do you want me to touch you now?” he offered, reaching down to brush his fingers over Ryan’s cock lightly, feeling it harden slightly against his fingers.

“Do you want to?” Ryan asked him.

Alex grinned up at the other man. “Every time we’re in the showers I think about touching you. How could this be any different now that I actually have the chance to do it?”

Ryan seemed satisfied with that answer and put the soap back down on the edge of the tub. Alex already knew exactly what he wanted to do to the other man, too. He’d known for a while now. Carefully (he didn’t want to try explaining any injuries to the coaching staff, and his world was still spinning just a little bit) he lowered himself down to his knees, looking up at Ryan. At this angle the water was still cascading down his back, keeping him warm, and as long as he kept his head tilted forward a little, not too much of it spilled into his eyes, and the way Ryan was looking at him—he’d stay on his knees as long as he needed to, to keep that look on the other man’s face.

He’d never done this before, so he was a little shaky as he reached out and wrapped his fingers around Ryan’s cock, leaning in to lick from the root to the tip. Ryan groaned a little, though, so he’d obviously done it right. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. It was a pretty obvious thing to do. Suck, use his hand, not too much teeth. He could do that.

He jerked Ryan a couple of times before closing his mouth over the tip and sucking on it lightly, taking in just a little bit more as carefully as he could, being cautious not to take in more than he knew that he could without gagging.

Ryan’s cock tasted—well, it tasted like he imagined cock always tasted like, but he actually kind of liked it. It was heady. Having the other man in his mouth made him feel powerful.

Ryan seemed to like it. He was hard and throbbing in Alex’s mouth, and Alex was trying to remember to breathe in through his nose as he bobbed his head and jerked his hand and marveled at how much more coordination it took than he’d always thought. A little water got into his nose and he tried to open his mouth wider to breathe in that way. It was much harder than he’d thought.

“A little faster,” Ryan was directing a little breathlessly, his fingers coming down to push Alex’s hair back, tracing his face and feeling his cock through his cheeks the way Alex had done to him earlier. “You’re so good.”

The praise spurred him on, and he managed to open his mouth a little wider and took a little more of the other man’s cock into his mouth, sucking it deeper and a little faster, his hand moving in tandem with it. 

“I’m gonna come,” Ryan warned him, and Alex wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He’d never been in this situation before, so he wasn’t sure what he _should_ do. He was a little worried that if he tried to swallow, he would choke and that would just be embarrassing, so he pulled his mouth off of Ryan’s cock and just continued jerking him fast and with a tighter grip, twisting his wrist just a little until he could feel the cock in his hand pulse and Ryan was coming, spurting over his hand and onto Alex’s chest, and he was messy again, but it didn’t matter.

He pulled back a little further and took in a few deeper breaths before moving to stand a little shakily, his knees aching from being on them for that short period of time, and his jaw aching just a little from the exertion. Maybe he hadn’t been ready to do something quite like that so far, but his doctor hadn’t exactly given him cock sucking advice.

Ryan was leaning against the shower wall, looking a little dazed, but was grinning and looking very pleased.

That made Alex grin a little in response and forget about the aching in his jaw and his knees. It made it worth it. 

“I knew you could get it up again, you’re not so old after all,” he chirped, leaning in to kiss the other man softly.

Ryan laughed against his lips. “You’re messy again.” He reached for the soap and rubbed it against his chest until he was clean again. Alex was humming and felt really good by the time he was done, and Ryan leaned in to kiss him softly again.

“You done in here?”

Alex nodded. After everything, he was starting to feel a little sleepy. Probably from a mix of all of the wine and all of the sex. “Yeah. I’d like to sleep now.”

Ryan nodded and reached around Alex to turn off the water, and they kind of lead each other out of the washroom, both of them stumbling a little until they fell into the bed together, laughing a little. 

“Come here,” Ryan murmured, pulling Alex against him and curling in tight to his body. “I love you. And I’ll love you in the morning even when you start to regret all of this.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured back, tangling his fingers with Ryan’s where they were wrapped around his waist. 

But it was true, he thought as Ryan pulled the blanket up and over their naked bodies. Tomorrow was going to be a scarier day. A day where he probably would regret most of what had happened tonight, but he’d always have tonight.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final Decisions need to be made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with the ending for this fic. I knew how I wanted to end it as soon as I wrote the second chapter but I didn't know if I had it in me to end it the way I wanted to. Eventually I had to just stick to my guns.
> 
> Also I don't know how this fic isn't called Roberto Luongo Voice of Reason. He's just always the voice of reason in my head.

There was a throbbing behind his eyes that radiated all through his head as he tried to wake up the next morning, it made nausea coil in his stomach and he was a little worried that he might be sick. He waited for a second, keeping his eyes closed and breathing deeply through his nose before he opened his eyes. He tried to roll over, only to find that he was trapped into place by strong arms wrapped around him and that probably woke him up faster than just about anything else could have.

He sat up, dislodging Ryan’s arms from around him and shoving him over to the other half of the bed as he realized that he was completely naked under the covers and hearing the other man grunt as he woke up with a bit of a start.

“Fuck, Burr, can’t you think of an easier way to wake a guy up?”

“You’re in my bed.”

Ryan opened one eye just to roll it at Alex and he ran his hands over his face. He looked really good in the morning and Alex had never thought that he’d be able to see Ryan first thing in the morning like this. He’d never thought—he wasn’t supposed to be seeing him like this. He’d made a promise to himself, and just a little too much wine and a moment of weakness (or a lot of moments of weakness) and he’d given in so completely to something that he hadn’t needed to give into. What had he been thinking?

The nausea rolled more prominently in the pit of his stomach and he wasn’t sure if it was from drinking too much last night or if it was from the near overwhelming realization of guilt and shame for what he’d let himself do last night. He’d let his emotions get the better of him, and everything they’d worked for all week—separating themselves from each other and working to be just a team unit… all that had been for nothing because now they were just back where they started.

“No shit,” Ryan was saying, sitting up so that the blankets hung dangerously low on his hips. “Don’t tell me you have some sort of convenient amnesia about last night. I was pretty sure you weren’t _that_ drunk.”

Ryan looked a little worried, though. Like he thought he might have taken too much advantage of an Alex who couldn’t have said no if he’d tried.

Alex thought that that was how he was most of the time with Ryan.

“No, don’t worry, I remember everything—well, maybe not everything, but most of it. Enough of it.”

Ryan exhaled, clearly relieved. “Good. So, what do we do now?”

Alex narrowed his eyes and reached as far as he could manage for his boxers. He shifted under the blankets to pull them over his hips. Even though Ryan had seen him naked countless numbers of times, it just seemed different now that they’d actually slept together in the same bed. They’d been—last night had been so different for them. It had been the next time that they were never meant to have.

He pulled his hands out of the blankets and stared down at his ring finger feeling a little sicker, like he might need to actually make his way to the washroom, the bile was biting its bitter way up the back of his throat. He hadn’t even thought to take his ring off. He’d been so stuck in focusing on just the pleasure of being in Ryan’s company.

How could he have let something like that happen?

He’d practically instigated it himself.

“What do you mean? It’s obvious what we do now. We pretend like this never happened. We get the fuck away from each other and make sure it never happens again.”

Both of Ryan’s eyes were open now, and he narrowed them. “What do you mean we pretend like it never happened? You seemed pretty happy with it last night.”

“We were both drunk as Hell last night! It was a mistake! Even you have to know it was a mistake. We should never have—we were doing so well before that.”

“It was so hard to be away from you before that, Burr. I was so angry about Lu and that was the only reason I was able to stay away from you.”

“Then you need to go back to being pissed at me, or something. You have to do something. We both have to do something, because this? This isn’t working for us.” Even though the idea of having Ryan angry with him again and going back to not even being able to meet his gaze in the locker room made his chest ache. Cold turkey hadn’t seemed to work for them before, if last night was anything to go by, but they had to do something. They couldn’t just keep falling into bed with each other.

He was pretty sure he’d had this conversation with himself before, too. It was ridiculous that he had to keep telling himself the same things over and over again.

“I can’t just go back to being pissed at you. Not after what happened last night. You might not remember everything that happened, but I remember every second of it.”

Alex let out a soft huff of exasperation. “How? Weren’t you drunk, too?”

Shrugging a little, Ryan looked away. “Not as much as you, I guess. Enough to get me through your door.”

Alex frowned. He didn’t like that Ryan hadn’t been as drunk as him. It made him feel somewhat vulnerable. There was no taking it back now, though. It was too late to take any of it back now. He knew he would if he could—he was trying to fix things with his wife, not make them more complicated.

“That’s—I don’t know what that is.”

The other man just shrugged again and Alex slid out of the bed, walking around the room to pull his pants on and looking for a shirt to tug over his head.

“We have a game tonight. Can we just focus on that?”

Sliding out of the bed and seeming completely comfortable in his nudity, Ryan nodded. “Fine by me. You’re the one making a big deal out of this.”

Alex groaned a little and turned his back on Ryan. “Would you get dressed, please? And I’m making a big deal out of this because it _is_ a big deal. How are you so okay with cheating on your wife?”

He heard Ryan rustling around and by the time he turned around, the other man was dressed in his suit from the night before. He felt a little more settled by that.

“I’m not fine with cheating on my wife!” Ryan argued, scowling a little. “I’m not fine with it at all, but the more I fight what’s happening with you, the worse things get with her.”

Alex was starting to think—well, not starting to think exactly, he’d had the feeling for a while now—that they’d made a huge mistake this whole time. Ever since they’d first slept together, everything had turned into a bigger mess. 

“That’s no excuse for us to keep sleeping together. If anything, it’s a good reason for us to _stop_ doing this. I don’t want this to happen anymore.”

Ryan shook his head. “You’re lying. You want to keep doing this over and over again. I could tell from what you did with me last night. You practically told me as much.”

Sighing, Alex shook his head taking a step back. “That has nothing to do with it. I don’t want to do this to my wife anymore. I’m done with this—and I think—maybe we should just tell them.”

That froze Ryan in his spot, and his eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “Are you fucking serious? You want to tell them what we’ve been doing?”

Swallowing hard, Alex pictured the look on Nancy’s face as he told her about what he’d been doing behind her back as she’d been at home taking care of their girls. It wasn’t a mental image that he liked to imagine. But maybe—what if it was the only choice he had left?

“No, I don’t _want_ to tell them, but at this point it might be the only choice we have left. Didn’t we say that if we couldn’t get this thing out of our systems that’s what we would do?”

Ryan nodded but still looked a little like Alex had hit him. “Yeah, but you were the one who said that it would work—that we absolutely wouldn’t tell them.”

Glancing away from Ryan, Alex shrugged a little. “Yeah, well that obviously hasn’t worked that well for us, now has it? We keep finding ourselves in the same place.”

Ryan sighed. “Don’t do anything drastic. Why don’t we just wait until after the road trip and decide when we get back to Vancouver?”

That seemed… well, it seemed fair enough.

“Okay, we’ll wait. I wouldn’t tell her on the phone, anyways. Fuck.”

Looking relieved Ryan nodded. “Good. We’ll just have to keep our hands off of each other, then. I’m sure we’re capable of that.”

Alex wasn’t so sure. That was why he was thinking that they were going to have to tell their wives, after all. Their worst case scenario.

 

Playing their newest divisional rivals had been hard all season long. They had barely managed to play a decent game against the Californian teams at all this year, and now that Alex was playing with the team, he wanted to help change that.

He had a lot of energy, too. He was still worked up from having woken up next to Ryan and having too many thoughts working themselves round in circles in his mind, chasing each other and making him wonder if he oughtn’t tell his wife the truth for the first time in weeks. Get it over with and fix the life that he’d worked so hard to build with her. Fix his family and start over again.

Maybe she could help him with his attraction to Ryan. Maybe if he knew that she was waiting at home for him, knowing that he was attracted to Ryan and knowing that Ryan’s wife knew, too, what they might get up to—maybe if it wasn’t a secret, it would take away the desire to do it at all. The shame would be so much worse if he knew his wife was at home knowing what he was up to for sure. He doubted that he could live with that.

Maybe that was the answer to their problem.

By the end of the game he was breathing heavy and sweating and stripping down next to Ryan without looking at him. That was how this had to be. He had his body turned a little towards Roberto who hadn’t missed the way that Ryan and Alex were avoiding each other in a completely different way now. He also hadn’t missed Ryan leaving Alex’s room that morning when he’d come to check on him to make sure he wasn’t too hung over, but he’d waited to comment on it. Probably for the sake of their game that night.

But they were heading out to the bus, now, and the game was over and they had a night of travel and then a day off before their next one. Roberto wasn’t afraid to ask him questions anymore. It seemed like questioning Alex had become part of Roberto’s post game ritual now. That was just great.

“What were you thinking?”

He glanced down at his shoes, noting that they were scuffed from walking in the mud a little. He’d have to clean them.

“Too much wine. You know how it is.”

Roberto raised a brow and shook his head. Alex was glad, not for the first time, that there weren’t any other guys on the team that spoke more than a passing amount of French anymore as their teammates passed them on the way to the bus.

“No, I don’t think I do. I don’t usually invite the teammate I’m cheating on my wife with into my room after I’ve stopped sleeping with him. Because I’m not an idiot and I wouldn’t get myself into these situations in the first place.”

Alex flushed darkly. “That’s not what happened.”

The brows stayed raised as Roberto sighed. “You’re lying to me. You guys are avoiding each other like two guys that have obviously slept together do.”

“Well—yeah, okay, that happened, but I didn’t invite him in for that reason.”

“Oh, really? Did you invite him in for a tea party?”

Groaning, Alex rubbed his hands over his face. Sometimes Roberto was so frustrating. 

“Obviously not. He came to make sure I wasn’t sleeping with _you_.”

A sharp laugh escaped Roberto, and the other man shook his head. “What business of his would it have been if we were sleeping together? You should have told him to fuck off and shut the door. Not invited him in. You should have known what it would lead to.”  
.  
Roberto wasn’t wrong. Alex probably _should_ have known what it would leave to if he let Ryan into his room, and a part of him had known that, but he just hadn’t cared in his drunken haze, and he’d just been so glad to see him after being avoided by him for so long. He’d just been so glad to be under his attention for the first time in what had felt like too long.

“Yeah, well no one ever said I was the smart one.”

Roberto shrugged a little. “I won’t argue with that. So what are you going to do now?”

Alex bit his lip and shrugged a little. He thought he knew what they were going to do. If they couldn’t hold it together for the rest of the road trip, they were going to tell their wives and get all the help they could from them.

“We’re going to try to spend as much time away from each other as possible. If that doesn’t work—we’re going to tell.”

His friend frowned a little. “Tell who?”

Alex licked his lips. “Tell our wives, obviously. Nancy and Andrea. Who else would I be talking about?”

This time Roberto’s brows made for his forehead quickly. “Are you serious?”

Alex frowned a little at how incredulous he sounded and nodded. “Yeah, of course I am. It’s the only way—we might need their help.”

“Do you really think that’s fair to them?”

He hadn’t really thought about it like that. He’d assumed that they were doing the wrong thing all along by keeping it from them, that they would have always wanted to know what their husbands were up to, not that it would be unfair to actually tell them.

“What do you mean? Don’t you think they would want to know, if there was something they could do to help us stop?”

Roberto sighed at him. “Could they really help you stop or would it just make you feel less guilty if your wife knew what you were doing?”

Alex wasn’t sure what the difference was. He thought that if his wife knew about him and about what he was doing, that the guilt would be what kept him from doing it anymore.

“That’s kind of the point. I think if she knew, that would keep me from wanting to be with Ryan anymore. It wouldn’t be a secret—it wouldn’t be like I could just lie to her and go out and meet Ryan somewhere without her knowing. She would always know.”

“And you think it’s fair that she should always be suspicious of her husband when he leaves to go to practice or off on an extended road trip with his team, because her suspiciousness makes you feel safer?”

When Roberto said it like that, it made Alex sound a bit like an asshole. He guessed that a lot of things about this whole situation would make him sound like an asshole, and he should be glad that he didn’t sound like an outright monster half the time.

“Well, it sounds bad when you say it like that.”

“It sounds bad when you say it any way, Burr. If you’re going to tell your wife, you have to be telling her because you want to come clean and work on fixing things with her and not because you want her knowing to scare you into being faithful to her.”

That made more sense, he guessed. He did want to be the kind of man that could be faithful to his wife. That had been his plan all along, after all. That he’d be able to be faithful without having all of these thoughts about Ryan that completely took him over. Maybe he didn’t even need to wait until the end of the road trip to know that he needed to be honest with his wife. Maybe he needed to just do it instead of waiting for it to be his last ditch effort.

Maybe he didn’t need to wait for Ryan’s permission. Maybe he just needed to pull Ryan along with him for once instead of being dragged along for the ride.

He leaned back against his seat.

“You get it now, Burr?”

Alex nodded, turning to look out the window. He had a lot to think about. “You’re saying that I shouldn’t wait to tell her as my last ditch effort, hoping that she’ll make me feel guilty enough to stop this thing with Ryan—if I’m going to tell her it should be because we’re going to heal our relationship and our family. It should be because I’ve decided to be honest with her.”

Roberto nodded beside him and he could tell that the other man looked entirely too pleased with himself.

“Yes, exactly. See, you’re not as stupid as you look after all. Congratulations.”

Alex resisted the urge to reach out and punch his teammate. They still needed Roberto to be healthy for their next game.

“Yeah, thanks.”

It was good advice, though. He just wasn’t sure that he was ready to follow it. A part of him wanted to wait and see how the next couple of days went. To see how he and Ryan managed to interact with each other. He didn’t really want to drag his wife into this mess unless he had to.

 

Thankfully there were no unexpected knocks at his hotel room door that night. He was extremely grateful for that, though he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. He doubted that Ryan would have so quickly gone against what he wanted and would have come to his room two nights in a row. Alex wasn’t sure what he would have done if the other man _had_ come to his room, anyways. Turn him away, probably. It would have been dreadfully awkward, for sure. He wasn’t sure how he would have done it. Would he have just closed the door in the other man’s face? Would he have begged him to leave him alone right there where any of their teammates could have opened their doors and seen them?

Or would he have opened the door to him and let him in and risked them having another incident like the one the night before, where he’d lost all of his self-control and given in to what his body had wanted? He’d been so careful not to have a single sip of anything alcoholic at dinner that night, because he didn’t want to risk even the chance of that happening again, and he’d noticed that Ryan had done the same thing. It was all about taking the steps to be as responsible as possible.

Part of that responsibility meant that he’d have to learn to keep his eyes away from the other man. Like how he’d watched him at dinner enough to know that he hadn’t had a drink. Or how he’d watched him as he’d walked to his own hotel room.

There was a game the day after tomorrow. He’d have to work just as hard to make sure that he didn’t let his gaze wander while they were getting undressed. He’d had years of practice at that, too. He could do all of those things. It was just putting the fact that they’d slept together out of his mind and going back to what it had been like before he’d known that Ryan had had feelings for him. It was just a matter of shelving those feelings again. He’d done it for years, he could do it again. It meant his family, and as much as he loved Ryan, did he love him more than he loved his whole family?

He thought of Victoria laughing and throwing her hands up around his neck as he swung her around as they skated around the ice at the family Christmas party, and how much his heart had felt warm and full feeling her clutching tightly to him her laugh filling his ears and her smile the only thing he could see. The sight of Lexie’s chubby face when he’d taken her in his arms for the first time and held her tight to his bare chest after she’d been born. He’d only been as happy as that one other time in his whole life, and that had been the first time he’d held Victoria. 

He thought of Nancy and watching her walk down the aisle towards him on their wedding day and how she’d vowed to take him for better or for worse and how she _had_. Through injury and through not knowing where his career was going for so long before he’d finally married her. She’d put up with so much from him and she’d loved him through it all.

As much as he loved Ryan, as fresh and new and strong as all of these feelings were, they couldn’t match the strength and pull of what he felt for his family. Of what he owed them. He couldn’t lose himself in the rush of feelings for his teammate, and he knew that if Ryan were thinking it through as critically as Alex was, he would be thinking the exact same thing. He knew there was no way that in the big picture Ryan would choose Alex over his kids. He knew that over everything else in his life, more than even his _life_ , Ryan loved those kids.

It was part of what made Ryan so loyal and that loyalty was what made him so attractive.

He knew what he had to do. He just had to wait out the road trip, and once they got home, he would tell his wife what had happened. He’d tell her because he wanted to start healing their relationship, and he’d hope that she could forgive him so that he could have his family back. That would be enough to stop him from fooling around with Ryan anymore. It had to be. He didn’t have to feel guilty about his wife knowing, he just had to want his family badly enough. That was the real solution to this problem.

Alex just had to hope that Ryan wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. He had to hope that the part of Ryan that realized how much he loved his kids and wanted to be a part of his family would be the man who would understand where he was coming from and would agree with him. He hoped that Ryan wouldn’t make it a harder decision than it already was. He’d just wait until they were back in Vancouver and then find a way to tell him. That way Ryan wouldn’t have as much time to try to change his mind if that was the route he tried to take.

 

They finished their game against Phoenix and they were just getting off the plane in Vancouver, free to go home for the night before getting ready for their game against Calgary in two days, and Alex had been so proud of himself, he and Ryan had been so good at keeping their distance from each other for the rest of the road trip. He guessed that the other man had just taken his cues from Alex and hadn’t given a single sign that he was ready to have any contact with Ryan just yet. It was still hard to just breathe in the same space as him and not give in to the urge to just grab hold of him and tell him that he loved him and that he wanted to be with him.

He was doing his best and his best had to be good enough.

He still hadn’t come up with a way to tell Ryan that he was going to tell his wife, but he thought maybe he could just take the easy way out and call him once he got to his car.

Alex was the last one off the plane and had said good bye to Roberto who was aware of his plan to tell his wife about his affair with Ryan and who supported it whole heartedly, and was walking slowly towards his car when he realized there was a figure of a man leaning against it in the otherwise empty parking lot already.

Fearful anxiety bubbled in his gut as he reached into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his phone, ready to pull it out and dial as he stepped closer to his car. Who knew who could be waiting at his car? It might just be a fan waiting for an autograph. That was what he was hoping, anyways.

The closer he got, though, the more obvious it was. His hand slipped out of his pocket, but the anxiety didn’t go anywhere. 

“What are you doing here?”

Ryan shrugged a little, pulling his coat tighter around him as he stared down at Alex. “I had to know what we were going to be doing and you’ve been avoiding me since LA.”

Alex had to give him that. It probably wasn’t entirely fair to just leave Ryan in the dark about their situation. “I’m sorry—I just, uh, wasn’t sure how to say what needed to be said.”

Ryan swallowed hard and Alex could see it even though he had a scarf pulled tight around his neck. The temptation to reach out and pull him in for a kiss was high, even though he’d already made up his mind that this thing was over.

“You’ve decided then? I don’t get a say in this?”

Alex shook his head. “I had to decide. Otherwise this thing was just going to keep going around in circles and it was never going to get resolved, Kes. I have to make a decision for both of us or this thing is going to get way out of control and we’ll never be able to make the right decision.”

Ryan just shook his head and opened his mouth like he was going to say something. Alex couldn’t let him. Not when he was finally feeling strong enough to do this.

“We have to tell our wives. Not because they’ll stop us from doing it anymore, but because we owe it to them. That’s the only way that this thing is going to be fixed—if we’re honest with them. I owe it to Nancy to be honest with her. I love you, I do, and I’m sorry that this thing is going to be, uh, it’s going to be so hard to get over for both of us, but I love my family more than I love anything else. I don’t know if it’s more than I love you right now, but I have to think that it is because I don’t think I can live with myself if it isn’t—please, I just need to believe it. I owe it to them to be their whole world for a long time and to be a good husband and a good father. I promised them that a long time ago, and I haven’t been very good at keeping my promises. I have to start—I think you feel the same way, if you really think about it. We can’t love each other as much as we love all of them. We just can’t. How can we possibly be together, Ryan, when we have families that need us as much as our families need us? You have kids that love you more than the whole world, who could never understand daddy leaving them to go and live with another man that he loved more than them. And Andrea—she didn’t do anything to deserve this, did she? I know my family didn’t. Don’t you think they deserve better than we’ve been giving them? We can love each other all we want, but eventually it won’t ever be worth giving up your kids and your wife for, and you’d hate me for it, and where would that love get us in the end? Nowhere. We’d be at a worse place than we are now, and all of the sacrifices wouldn’t be worth a single penny. I can’t do it. I can’t give up my family. I have to be strong enough to do this, even if it hurts. You have to be as strong as you are, too. I know you’re strong enough to do this.”

He was out of breath by the time he was done spilling his guts to Ryan, and he licked his lips anxiously, his tongue working over the uneven skin as he stared at the other man. His heart was pounding in his aching chest, and he wasn’t sure how Ryan was going to take it—would he fight him still, even after he’d begged him not to? Part of him wanted him to fight _with_ him to put their families back together, to get everything on track and to be a team in this thing, but a part of him wanted Ryan to fight him, to try to make a go of this thing again—that part made him feel a little uneasy and he shoved it aside. That was a useless part of him that wasn’t helping anything along. He wouldn’t get anywhere with that part of him anywhere near the wheel.

There was a resigned look on Ryan’s face. Like he knew that there was no fighting Alex on it. Like he couldn’t bear to hear anymore of Alex telling him that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—love him anymore. He just reached forward and cupped Alex’s cheek. Alex resisted the urge to look around them. He knew the parking lot was empty already. This was the very last time there would be anything more than a friendly touch between them and he knew that for sure. Tonight was it.

“I love you too and I know you’re right, but that’s not making this any easier. I’ve failed as a father, as a husband, and as a teammate. Now I’m afraid I’m going to fail as your best friend because I don’t know how I’m going to look at you without wanting you. How I can go back to loving you from a distance now that I know that somewhere under that obnoxious French exterior… you love me too. I can’t ask you to give up anything for me that you’re not willing to give up, but know that I would have tried anything to make this work between us. I mean—maybe you’re right and it would have been a huge mistake that would have blown up in our faces, but I would have tried. I love you, Alex. I think that no matter how distant you want to make our friendship, I’ll always love you, so you’d better get used to that thought. I don’t want you to think that I’m giving up on you because I just don’t love you enough—I’m only giving up on this because you’re asking me the way you’re asking me and because I think, somehow, you might be right. I do love my kids and I do love my wife and I don’t know how not to love them. So maybe this would have been a huge mistake between us, maybe it already was—maybe you hate what we had already, but I’m not sorry. No matter what Andrea says about it when I tell her—I’m not sorry that I got to know you that way. I’m not sorry that I got to love you like that for even a short time. I’m just—not sorry that I got to have you, even if it got us into this mess. I don’t know how to be sorry for that. It’s just not in my nature.”

Alex breathed deep through his nose and closed his eyes for a second before shaking his head. “I don’t—I don’t hate what we have, I just wish, uh, I wish we could have had it in another life before we’d made families and lives for ourselves. When we had a chance.”

Ryan shook his head a little, his thumb brushing against Alex’s bottom lip as he continued to hold lightly against his cheek. He obviously didn’t want to let go of him. “I wish that, too, but we just have to take what we can get. And then hope that we don’t fail at being better now.”  
Alex turned his face into the warmth of Ryan’s hand, his lips brushing against the other man’s palm. “You’re not going to fail. You’re Ryan Kesler. You promised that you’d never fail ever again, remember?”

Ryan huffed out a breath and Alex could see it linger in the cold air between them. “I remember. Do you really think we’ll be all right after this?”

Alex shook his head a little, careful not to dislodge Ryan’s hand from where it was holding him. He wanted that contact just a little bit longer. “No. I think it’s going to take time for all of us but I think we’ll do our best and that’s all we can do. We’ll just have to be strong for our families, for the team. For each other, if we can be.”

Ryan leaned in and pressed his forehead against Alex’s. The closeness felt good. Alex felt an aching in his chest at the knowledge that it would be the last time, but there was still something about getting to have this moment. At least he would have this moment.

“I’m the strongest guy you know, right?”

He grinned a little and nodded, feeling Ryan’s tuque slide as he moved his head. “You are. That’s why we’re going to be okay.”

Ryan leaned the rest of the way in and they were kissing slowly. It was so obviously a goodbye kiss, just the slow slide of their lips against each other, dry and chapped from always being in the cold and never having applied enough Chap Stick, and it didn’t last nearly long enough. By the time they were pulling apart, their lips tuck together a little, and Alex was licking his to chase the taste of Ryan just a little. To chase the moment and make it last just a little bit longer.

“I won’t forget what we had, even after everything. I swear, Alex, I won’t forget loving you. IF anything ever happens—”

Alex nodded as he pulled away and swallowed hard, finally taking a step back. “I know. Me neither. But this is for the best. We’ll both be better, stronger men for it. No more distractions. Just our families and hockey. The way it’s supposed to be.”

For a second he thought that Ryan might reach out for him again, but the other man just tightened his hand into a fist at his side and held back from doing what he obviously wanted to do. They were already doing better than they’d done in the month since this whole thing had started.

“The way it’s supposed to be,” Ryan parroted quietly, his gaze focused intently on Alex’s face like he wasn’t quite ready to look away yet. 

“I’m going to go now, because if I don’t…” He wasn’t sure how long he could keep standing in front of Ryan who looked a little like the rug had been pulled out from under him still. He didn’t want to tempt fate any more than he already had.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I should go, too. Have to figure out what I’m going to say to Andrea.”

Alex felt a little bad that he hadn’t given Ryan more time to figure out what to say to his wife, but he knew that if he’d told the other man that he’d decided definitively that they were going to tell their wives while they were still on their road trip, he might have tried to find a way to get him to change his mind. This was the best way.

“Okay, well, I—goodnight. See you tomorrow. Good luck.”

Ryan nodded and pushed away from Alex’s car to head out towards his own. “Yeah, goodnight. I—goodnight.”

It took Alex a minute to compose himself before he was able to unlock his car and slide into the driver’s seat, resting his forehead against the steering wheel and clutching it tightly as he swallowed past a thick, horrible lump in his throat and blinked away the painful stinging in his eyes. He had to get home before it was too late.

He could do this.

After a couple of minutes of deep breathing and just sitting there and watching Ryan’s car pull out of the lot, Alex turned his car on and headed back to his house, repeating over and over in his head what he was going to say to his wife. He’d left things in a bit of a shamble when he’d left for the road trip, and he knew that she suspected that he was seeing another woman.

He hoped that telling her what had happened would be a relief for her instead of making things worse.

Pulling into his driveway, his pulse was racing and he took his time turning the car off and heading inside. He was quiet as he placed his keys into the bowl by the door and made his way up the stairs. He didn’t want to wake the girls up. Not now that he finally had some courage to do this thing.

Alex stepped into the bedroom that he shared with his wife, his heart pounding hard and loud in his chest. He had to do this. 

It was time to do what he probably should have done in the first place. He should have just trusted Nancy with the truth to start with. It probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. A little bump and they could have gotten over it quickly, but now he had to admit that he’d been unfaithful to her, and he’d have to tell her that it had been with someone else that she trusted. He’d have to admit that he hadn’t been able to keep their vows and hope for the best.

He’d have to hope that somewhere in her heart she loved him enough to forgive him and give him another shot to make it up to him and to push their family through the hardship that was going to come from this mistake that he’d made. He’d have to work through his feelings for Ryan—and what was that going to be like for her? He was going to tell his wife that he had fallen in love with someone else, and hope that she could help him get over it.

It seemed cruel. But she was the only other person he’d ever loved, the only person that could save him from drowning in Ryan. She was his last hope.

He was suddenly so very desperate for her to understand that he’d done what he’d done out of a hope that he’d be able to save their marriage on his own, even if there had been a part of him that had been selfish and had wanted to know what it would be like to be with this other person that he loved. He hoped that she would love him through her own hurt.

Suddenly, the love that he felt for her roared to life in his chest and he grieved for it, hoping that she loved him enough to love him through this sin. Love him through betraying his family for too many moments of weakness. He hoped that somewhere, Ryan was getting ready to do the same thing. To take the first step to fixing his own family. This had been their ultimate decision. To put aside the feelings he had for Ryan and work on the thing that truly meant the most to him.

His family. His wife. The life that he’d spent so many years working to build.

Not the love that had come out of nowhere to surprise him with its intensity. He’d have to work on tamping that down somehow. He was a strong guy, it wouldn’t be impossible. It would just mean hard work. Something that he wasn’t a stranger to. Even though he already felt weaker than he ever had in his entire life, standing there and wishing for Ryan to be the life raft that he could cling to while he confessed his sins to his wife. Something entirely unfair. A part of him still wished that he could love them both. A part of him knew that regardless of his decision to tell his wife and fix his family and shove his love for Ryan behind everything else—he would still love them both. There wasn’t ever going to be any helping that. He’d just live his life hoping that not fanning the flames of his love for Ryan meant that they would eventually burn out. A useless hope, but the only one he had to him.

By the time Nancy looked up at him, he knew his cheeks were wet and his vision was still a little blurred. He knew that there was no winning in this situation. Either way he was giving up something that meant a huge part of his life. He just hoped that neither Nancy nor Ryan would ever be completely out of his grasp forever. He needed his wife to be his wife and he needed Ryan to be his friend, even if they’d lose some of the closeness they’d spent so much time building.

It would take a long time to rebuild the friendship that he had with Ryan after this, and that would only be if his wife was comfortable with it. Who knew what she would decide after she realized the truth? He’d do whatever she wanted, if only she would forgive him, but he didn’t know if he could really give up Ryan completely as a part of his life, even if she demanded it.

He and Ryan would have to work together to keep the team as cohesive as possible, but they both knew that it was going to be different from now on. They couldn’t be as close as they had been before. That closeness would forever be marred by the feelings they shared, and there was no coming back from that.

When Nancy met his gaze, she sighed a heavy, sad sigh and placed her book on the bedside table, smoothing out her shirt before standing from the bed and stepping over to him. There was a look of resignation on her face, but the shine of tears in her eyes belied the calm expression on her face.

“Are you leaving?”

The comment shocked him back to reality, and he realized—she must have thought that he was choosing another life over the one they’d built together. He realized the weight that this whole situation must have had on her, and she didn’t even know what had been going on. Well, she’d had a faint clue, but she didn’t have any of the details. Just the hint of infidelity to work with. He felt guilty and ashamed and completely self-absorbed for not thinking more about the effects this thing was having on his family even before he’d come to the decision to be honest with her.

He reached for her hands, and held them tightly, knowing that she may very well turn him away as soon as he told her what was going on. Would she be repulsed by him? “No. No, I swear I’m not leaving. But I have to tell you something.”

She drew in a shaking breath and the tears that had gathered in her eyes fell down her cheeks slowly. They stood in silence together, and the strong woman that he’d married and who had given him two children and that he’d loved as long as he could remember crumbled a little in front of him as he searched for the words to explain to her what had happened to him.

She opened her mouth and he was afraid that she was going to tell him not to tell her—but he had to. He had to tell her now or he was afraid that he’d never be able to tell her and things would never be okay. He had to tell her while he was still strong enough to do something about all of this.

“I have to tell you the truth.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Retrospect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126761) by [coco_palmolive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coco_palmolive/pseuds/coco_palmolive)




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